Debate

"What is the Future of NATO?"

In early April, NATO will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a summit taking place in Baden-Baden and Strasbourg – likely to be accompanied by thousands of protesters demonstrating against the military alliance. The festivities will coincide with US President Barack Obama’s first state visit to Europe. But the ceremonious occasion can hardly mask the tensions within the NATO alliance today. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are competing for the favor of the new US president. And a good six months after the war in the Caucasus, relations with Russia are still unclear – as Moscow threatens to launch a massive arms program right on time for NATO’s anniversary. Most urgent, though, is the search for a new strategy in Afghanistan – some warn that a failure in the Hindu Kush could spell the end of NATO. These current conflicts are indicators that, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, NATO is still struggling to define its role, leading us to ask: “What is the Future of NATO?“

Karen Donfried is Deputy Director of the German Marshall Fund in Washington and was formerly part of the planning staff at the US State Department. Rolf Mützenich, a German Bundestag representative in the SPD Party, is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a spokesman on disarmament policy for his parliamentary faction. Reinhard Mutz is Senior Search Fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy and co-edited the Peace Report, the yearbook of the five leading German peace research institutes. Stefan Fröhlich is a professor for International Policy at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and has had multiple teaching and research stints in the USA, most recently in 2007 as Public Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies in Washington, D.C.

In cooperation with Dellbrücker Forum.

Moderation: Arnd Henze, Deputy Head of Foreign News at WDR Television.