For Immediate Release

Contact: Kay Hechler, 202-429-3816

(Washington)—The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) announces the publication of NATO’s Balancing Act, by former USIP Senior Fellow David S. Yost. In recent years, NATO has come under increasing fire for its structural constraints and expanding functions, shortcomings in burden sharing among its members, and disagreements about threat assessments and priorities. Yost assesses these challenges and contends that NATO remains indispensable to the defense of the security and values of all the Allies, including the United States.

Since the end of the Cold War, the NATO Allies have lacked a single unifying threat, but they have continued to work together and even enlarged their Alliance. Retaining their original missions of collective defense and dialogue with potential adversaries, they have also taken on new crisis management functions—including peacekeeping and intervention in foreign conflicts—as well as the pursuit of a cooperative security vision for democracy and peace in the Euro-Atlantic region and beyond, with many partnerships with non-NATO countries. NATO’s Balancing Act evaluates the Alliance’s performance of these core tasks and reviews its members’ efforts to achieve the right balance among them.

Yost presents a detailed examination of the evolving security environment and its implications for collective defense before turning to the Alliance’s crisis management efforts in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya. Yost also considers the possibility of NATO’s further enlargement and its interactions with other international organizations. With mounting tensions between Russia and Ukraine, NATO’s fundamental role in collective defense is center stage as it openly condemns Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and urges Russia to halt its destabilization activities in Ukraine. Yost reviews NATO’s shifting relationships with Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, among other countries and regions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David S. Yost is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. A senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (1996–97), he has also held fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, Fulbright, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome in 2004-2007 and a guest scholar there in 2011. He is the author of NATO Transformed (USIP Press, 1998).

ABOUT THE UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan conflict management center created by Congress to prevent and mitigate international conflict through nonviolent means. USIP saves lives, increases the government’s ability to deal with conflicts before they escalate, reduces government costs, and enhances national security. USIP is headquartered in Washington, DC. To learn more, visit www.usip.org.

NATO’s Balancing Act
United States Institute of Peace Press
Available now • Pub month: July 2014
464 pp. • 6 x 9 • ISBN 978-1-60127-202-7
www.bookstore.usip.org

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Kay Hechler
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E-mail: khechler@usip.org