On NATO Transformation

This paper, under the guidance of historical materialism, by putting NATO's transformation under the background of globalization and changes of international patterns after cold war, by taking all driving forces affecting NATO's transformation and their interrelations into account, analyzed the interrelations between NATO's transformation, changes of international patterns and changes of the interest of its member countries, internal and external causes of NATO's transformation, and influences of NATO's transformation on the alliance and contemporary international relations.This paper includes four chapters.The first two chapters mainly discussed the evolution of NATO's strategy in the past 60 years since its establishment. The first two chapters, by putting NATO into two different international political backgrounds, namely the US-Soviet bipolar pattern in cold war and multi-polar pattern after cold war, by comparative analysis on NATO's military strategies, political strategies and organizational mechanisms in cold war and after cold war, explained changes and developments of NATO's nature, function, strategic objectives and organizational mechanisms. After its establishment, NATO had been a military-political organization, an organization for collective defense. After cold war, in the face of the changed security environment, the US and its European alliances set two objectives for NATO: on one hand, NATO was expected to be the tool for unifying and stabilizing Europe, which means that NATO's political function shall be strengthened ceaselessly; on the other hand, NATO was expected to change its military strategy in order to deal with new security issues under new situation, namely NATO was required to have quick reaction capabilities for handling crisis. NATO's transformation developed along with these two directions. First, NATO's political function had been strengthened, together with reserving its collective defense article, bilateral and multi-lateral security cooperation had become the alliance's main tools, and NATO had been the base of an opening trans-European cooperative security system, and it had changed from a collective defense organization into a collective security organization. Second, NATO had set crisis handling and anti-terrorism strategy, broken through restrictions on actions out of defense zone, and greatly adjusted its command system and military deployment. The third chapter mainly analyzed and discussed the internal and external causes of NATO's transformation. On one hand, due to the profound changes of international patterns and security environment, NATO's theoretical foundation, validity foundation and systematic foundation had been weaken, therefore, NATO was expected to transform in order to fulfill the requirement of new security situation and deal with its existential crisis. On the other hand, NATO's transformation reflected western countries'desire to consolidate their relative superiority in international pattern after cold war and pursue their security interests. For the US, U.K., France, Germany and other big powers in NATO, on one hand, they could pursue their common security interests through NATO; on the other hand, NATO was helpful for them to implement their global strategy, or strengthen their relative power in their own region, or balance other powers'influence, or improve their status and influences in international system. Thus, both American and Europeans drove NATO to transform after cold war. For Russia, one of the external causes for NATO's transformation, it not only had influences on NATO's effort for constructing new security order in Europe, but also had key influences on NATO's existence and enlargement.The fourth chapter mainly analyzed the influences and challenges of NATO's transformation. For its influences, NATO's transformation not only had influences on NATO's existence, but also led discussions on several key issues, like strategic games on Eurasia, triangle relations among the US, Russia and the European Union, and China's geo-strategic role in US's bi-oceanic strategy, and etc. Its influences were profound. For internal and external challenges in NATO's transformation, since both the US and European Union had the requirement to improve and strengthen bilateral relations, the US-EU alliance would maintain stable and sustainable generally in the future, US-EU relations would characterize as a mixture of strategic cooperation and tactical disputes. For NATO's enlargement, it would continue its enlargement towards two directions, one would be western Balkans, the other would be Ukraine-Transcaucasia-Central Asia, and even Mongolia. For the NATO-Russia relations, both parties had no option but to continue to contain and anti-contain, conflict and cooperate, they would maintain their conflict but without complete break.The conclusion was that, on one hand, the success or not of NATO's transformation would mainly lie on its satisfaction or not with its member countries'particularly its key members'diplomatic strategies and requirements on national interests. If they did not satisfy with the alliance's actions, the function and future of the alliance would be doubtful; on the other hand, NATO had no option but to go along with world trends so as to continue its transformation, or it would go into cul-de-sac.