Methodologically, the study is a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods analysis built on a comparative case study design. The authors combine social constructivism, which treats international organizations as social phenomena that diffuse norms and reshape what states consider legitimate behavior, with institutionalism, which conceptualizes the same organizations as concrete mechanisms for delivering regional security and stability. Their primary evidence consists of official reports and policy documents from the EU and NATO, supplemented by academic literature, think-tank analyses and statistical indicators covering security, investment and democratic performance. Qualitative content analysis and comparative analysis were used to extract themes of stabilization, democratization, military cooperation and economic support, while secondary quantitative indicators tracked trends in citizen safety and wellbeing across the six Western Balkan countries. This dual lens matters, because a purely military reading of Balkan security misses the socio-economic roots of instability, and a purely normative reading misses the hard power that ended the shooting.

The theoretical scaffolding rests on a longer history of international organization. The authors trace the concept back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established state sovereignty as the organizing principle of international relations, through the structured diplomatic cooperation introduced at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, to the League of Nations, the first universal attempt at collective security after World War I. Although the League failed, it laid the conceptual foundation for the post-1948 explosion of multilateral institutions. The paper notes that international organizations grew from roughly 50 in the interwar period to about 80, and then surged to around 6,000 by 1980 as the Bretton Woods system, built around the US dollar as a reference currency, sought to prevent economic conflicts and maintain monetary stability and free trade. In the authors’ framing, international organization is a process, and international organizations are snapshots of that process at particular stages—a formulation borrowed from the interwar scholar Inis Claude.

Against this backdrop, the Western Balkans present a distinctive threat landscape. The region’s governments classify risks into conventional threats and weapons of mass destruction, transnational and unconventional threats, poor governance, and natural disasters. Nationalist-political, ethnic and religious tensions, together with disputes over indeterminate borders, remain the dangers most capable of destabilizing the region and reigniting armed conflict. Yet the study emphasizes a second, quieter threat: weak institutions, corruption and organized crime, which erode the state’s capacity to protect its own population. When states cannot guarantee basic security, the authors argue, the importance of international security organizations is reaffirmed—the United Nations as the largest multilateral body deploying peacekeeping missions, and NATO as the intergovernmental regional alliance dedicated to peace, security and defense. These dynamics also created urgency for Europe to assume greater responsibility for international peace and to present itself as a global strategic actor.

The empirical core of the paper documents how that responsibility has been exercised on the ground. Following NATO’s 1999 campaign in Kosovo, the UN-mandated security force KFOR was deployed under Security Council Resolution 1244 to provide security and monitor the withdrawal of Serb armed forces, and it continues as a peacekeeping force supporting the Kosovo Security Force. After nearly eight years of UN administration, Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 created conditions for the EU to launch EULEX in November 2008 through the so-called six-point plan, a mission covering rule of law responsibilities in politics, justice and customs. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the overall security situation was relatively stable by 2012, but corruption and organized crime persisted as significant challenges; the EU closed its police mission EUPM in June 2012, an operation born of the bloc’s crisis-management ambitions, while continuing to support the rule of law. The European Commission, through its annual country reports, continues to monitor judicial independence, the fight against corruption and organized crime, democratic governance, public administration reform and fundamental rights across the region.

The enlargement framework itself functions as a security instrument, and the study maps each country’s position within it with technical precision. Montenegro began its accession process in December 2011, opened negotiations in 2012, and held its 2016 parliamentary elections under a revised and transparent legal framework characterized by general respect for fundamental freedoms, though progress on media freedom and the economy remains outstanding. Serbia was granted EU candidate status in March 2012 and opened the first negotiating chapters in December 2015, with the pace of talks tied explicitly to rule-of-law progress and the normalization of relations with Kosovo. Albania received candidate status in June 2014 and has advanced on key priorities, including justice reform and the judicial vetting process, but low conviction rates for organized crime offenses such as money laundering and trafficking remain a sticking point. Bosnia and Herzegovina submitted its EU application in February 2016, while Kosovo has taken major steps toward visa liberalization, conditioned on ratifying its border agreement with Montenegro and strengthening the fight against organized crime. Croatia, an EU member since 2013, illustrates the post-accession challenge: the Commission’s reports flag economic performance, public administration, state-owned enterprises and lingering clientelism as areas demanding reform.

On the military dimension, the paper draws on analysis from the Kosovo-based think tank KIPRED to argue that NATO’s arrival fundamentally altered the regional balance. First, the security situation stabilized and armed conflict was discouraged, transforming a region of war-torn societies with hostile neighborly relations into a relatively peaceful one. Second, NATO influenced the transformation of mass territorial-defense armies into smaller professional forces, reducing offensive capabilities against neighbors. Third, NATO enlargement played a crucial role in closing off attempts at violent border change. Fourth, the Partnership for Peace channeled defense cooperation exclusively through Brussels, ending hopes of bilateral or regional counter-balancing alliances. The same analysis, however, flags a genuine concern: Serbia’s defense cooperation with Russia, which includes the Joint Serbo-Russian Center for Response to Emergency Situations—the first such center Russia has opened in Europe since the Cold War—joint military maneuvers, and Serbia’s observer status in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization’s parliamentary assembly. The study contends that Russia exploits troubled ethnic relations in countries outside the EU and NATO—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia—to re-extend its influence, finding fertile ground wherever Brussels shows indecision and US leadership on enlargement wavers.

Threat perceptions within the region itself are strikingly asymmetric, and the authors treat this asymmetry as data. Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia consider the threat of armed conflict almost non-existent; Albania and Kosovo predict a significant decline; Croatia and Montenegro judge it greatly reduced; Serbia treats it merely as reduced. None of the six completely rules out armed conflict, which could arise mainly from attempts at violent border change, though the possibility of a successful offensive against neighbors is judged small. In military capabilities and defense industry, Serbia and Croatia dominate, while the other states’ forces are marginal: Albania’s military budget stands at roughly 101.75 million euros, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s at around 46 million, and Kosovo’s at 42.03 million with an expected increase. Serbia projects Kosovo as a direct conventional threat and a troubled entity, and the paper suggests Belgrade maintains military planning for unforeseen situations against Pristina. KIPRED’s assessment is sobering: short of a conventional offensive to annex territory north of the Ibar, any Serbian-Kosovar conflict would likely be protracted, with both sides suffering comparable domestic and foreign political injury. The study concludes that the only rational path is normalization of defense relations through confidence-building measures, alongside Kosovo’s membership in the Partnership for Peace, which could eventually allow KFOR’s withdrawal while preserving stability.

The discussion and conclusion sections broaden the lens to non-traditional security. The reduction of large-scale armed conflict confirms the stabilizing impact of NATO’s military presence and broader Euro-Atlantic engagement, supporting the argument that international organizations function as security providers and confidence-building mechanisms in fragile regions. But security has evolved beyond military threats: organized crime, corruption, irregular migration and refugee flows continue to undermine institutional consolidation, and external dangers such as international terrorism and violent extremism—including the threat posed by ISIS—demonstrate the interconnectedness of regional and global security, demanding cooperation in intelligence sharing, border management and social resilience. The authors classify the region’s unfinished transformation into three processes—stabilization and state-building, democratization and institution-building, and Euro-Atlantic integration—and warn that stabilization built from the outside, running in parallel with democratization, risks instability where credible measures overlook conflict leaders. Their verdict is measured: international organizations have been instrumental in stabilizing the Western Balkans, but long-term security depends on addressing internal vulnerabilities alongside external risks through comprehensive, multidimensional engagement—a finding that resonates far beyond the Balkans for every fragile region where peace is being engineered from the outside in.

Subject of Research: The role of international organizations, particularly the EU and NATO, in regional security and stability in the Western Balkans

Article Title: Role of international organizations in the security of the Western Balkans

Article References: Oxha, S., Rushiti, F., & Mirtezani, L. (2026). Role of international organizations in the security of the Western Balkans. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00562-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00562-9

Keywords: Western Balkans, NATO, European Union, regional security, international organizations, Kosovo, Serbia, EULEX, KFOR, Euro-Atlantic integration, organized crime, Russia

The starting point of the analysis is the scale of the external shock. The United States, historically Europe’s closest ally, is now using its enormous market power as a geoeconomic weapon, imposing tariffs and regulatory pressure on partners and adversaries alike. According to the paper, the Trump administration’s approach is not an aberration but the product of a coherent ideological project, documented in initiatives such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which seeks to reshape American governance and its relationship with the world. For the EU, this means confronting a dual challenge: an economic assault on its export-driven model and a political assault on the liberal-democratic norms on which the Union itself is founded.

Technically, the EU’s response rests on an expanding arsenal of geoeconomic instruments. The paper highlights the Anti-Coercion Instrument, adopted in December 2023 under Regulation (EU) 2023/2675, which allows the Union to retaliate against third countries that apply economic pressure on member states. Alongside it stand the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, which regulate the power of large technology platforms, and the International Procurement Instrument, which opens third-country public procurement markets reciprocally. The European Economic Security Strategy of 2023 adds a further layer, focusing on the resilience of supply chains, the prevention of technology leakage, and the integration of economic security monitoring into the European External Action Service. Together, these instruments mark what the author describes as a geo-economization of EU policy: the deliberate fusion of economic regulation with strategic objectives.

Yet the empirical record shows how difficult de-risking remains in practice. Despite the EU’s defensive measures, its strategic dependency on China has actually increased, as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, according to research by the Peterson Institute for International Economics cited in the study. The EU’s own China Strategy of 2019 famously described China as a partner, a competitor and a systemic rival simultaneously, a formulation that captures the Union’s ambivalence. While Washington and Beijing decouple, Brussels and Beijing have deepened trade ties, leaving the EU exposed precisely at the moment it seeks strategic autonomy. This tension between declared policy and measurable dependency is one of the central weaknesses the analysis identifies in the Union’s current approach.

To diversify away from this exposure, the EU has accelerated an ambitious trade agenda. Negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Indonesia were finalised on 23 September 2025, with entry into force expected by 1 January 2027. The Commission has also proposed the adoption of the long-stalled Mercosur and Mexico agreements, and is developing new instruments such as clean trade and investment partnerships and raw-materials partnerships designed to secure critical inputs for the green and digital transitions. The Global Gateway initiative, the EU’s answer to China’s Belt and Road, channels infrastructure investment into partner countries as a tool of geopolitical influence. The paper treats these moves as evidence that Brussels is rediscovering itself as a geopolitical union, at least in the economic domain.

Security policy shows a similar pattern of pragmatic acceleration. The European Defence Fund, a component of the Common Security and Defence Policy with a budget of nearly 7.3 billion euros for 2021 to 2027, coordinates national investment in defence research and improves interoperability between national armed forces. The European Peace Facility has mobilised 6.1 billion euros to reimburse countries exporting defence equipment to Ukraine, and the EU and its member states had collectively committed 63.2 billion euros in military support for Ukraine as of September 2025. Under the ReArm Europe plan and the NATO summit declaration of The Hague in June 2025, allies committed to reaching defence spending of 5 percent of GDP by 2035, of which 3.5 percent counts as core defence expenditure and 1.5 percent covers defence-related items such as infrastructure. The proposed 2028 to 2034 EU budget further embeds defence as a Union-level funding priority.

What the Union conspicuously has not done, according to the study, is reform its own governance. Treaty change, qualified majority voting in foreign and security policy, and deeper fiscal integration all remain blocked by the lack of political will and consensus among member states. Governments in Hungary and Slovakia, along with much of Europe’s right-wing populist landscape, favour a different course altogether, arguing that Europe should seek a balance with Russia through trade and concessions even as Russia rebuilds an empire on the continent’s eastern frontier. The paper contrasts this position with the view, articulated in Foreign Affairs, that a settlement of the Ukraine war favouring Russia would pose an existential threat to Europe. This fundamental disagreement over strategy is precisely what makes governance reform impossible and policy reform the only feasible path.

The author characterises the focus on policy reform as a pragmatic approach with genuine merits. It allows the Union to act quickly with the instruments it already possesses, avoiding the years of intergovernmental negotiation that treaty change would require. It also preserves the institutional status quo at a moment when the legitimacy of the entire European project is under ideological attack, including from within the United States, as illustrated by Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, which criticised European democratic norms. In this reading, the EU’s regulatory state, its single market and its trade competence are its strongest cards, and playing them aggressively is a rational adaptation to a hostile environment.

But the strategy carries a structural vulnerability that the paper places at the centre of its conclusion. Policy reform depends on supportive governments in the member states, and those governments are precisely what Trumpism seeks to change. Right-wing populist parties across Europe, emboldened and networked by their American counterparts, could win power in large EU countries and reverse the geoeconomic turn from within, blocking sanctions, diluting the Anti-Coercion Instrument, and steering the Union toward accommodation with Moscow. The analysis, drawing on recent scholarship on the alliance of the new right, warns that the entire edifice of pragmatic reform rests on a political foundation that could erode at the ballot box. Policy instruments, however sophisticated, cannot protect an institution whose member states no longer share its strategic premises.

The study thus answers its own title question with a qualified negative. Policy reform short of governance reform may suffice to manage the economic shock of Trumpism in the short term, and the evidence of the past two years, from defence spending commitments to new trade agreements, shows a Union capable of remarkable tactical adaptation. Yet without eventual governance reform, the EU lacks the resilience to withstand a political shock, namely the capture of major member-state governments by forces hostile to the integration project itself. The paper frames the present moment as a window of opportunity in which the Union can use the external threat as a catalyst for internal renewal, while acknowledging that whether that window remains open is a question that European voters, not Brussels technocrats, will ultimately decide.

Subject of Research: EU policy and governance reform in response to Trumpism and geoeconomic pressure from the United States

Article Title: Trump and the European Union: will policy reform short of governance reform suffice to withstand Trumpism?

Article References: Regenbrecht, J. (2025). Trump and the European Union: will policy reform short of governance reform suffice to withstand Trumpism?. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 422-432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00126-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00126-8

Keywords: European Union, Trumpism, geoeconomics, governance reform, EU trade policy, economic security, defence policy, right-wing populism, strategic autonomy, Ukraine, China, NATO

The analytical core of the paper rests on a distinction between disruption and catalysis. Where much commentary has treated Trump’s approach to alliances as an anomaly to be waited out, Scotto contends that the phenomenon functions instead as an accelerant for dynamics that were already latent in the European project. The European Union has long possessed economic weight and regulatory power, often described through the notion of the Brussels Effect, in which EU standards shape global markets, but it has historically lacked the capacity for collective action in the domains of hard security and high politics. Scholars have described the EU as a regulatory polity, strong at setting rules for trade and product standards yet weak at integrating what are called core state powers: defense, policing, taxation, and the other instruments through which states ultimately guarantee their own survival. Trump’s return to the presidency, the paper argues, has exposed this asymmetry with unusual force.

The first of three interrelated dynamics identified in the study concerns the rebalancing of the transatlantic relationship itself. Since the founding decades of the Cold War, European security has rested on what the historian Geir Lundestad famously described as an empire by invitation, in which Western European states welcomed an American security umbrella in exchange for alignment. That bargain assumed a durable American commitment to European territorial integrity. Trump’s public skepticism toward NATO, his demands that European allies dramatically increase defense spending, and his framing of alliances as transactions in which the United States pays and everybody else benefits have converted that assumption into a conditional one. The paper traces this rhetorical lineage from Trump’s 2016 campaign statements, when he called NATO obsolete and suggested the alliance might be allowed to break up, through his 2024 Republican National Convention speech, showing how the conditional character of American protection has become an explicit feature of the strategic environment rather than a background assumption.

This conditionality has spurred a cascade of EU-level and national initiatives. The study points to the Strategic Compass adopted by the Council of the European Union in 2022, which set out an ambitious framework for the Union to act as a security provider, and to the 2016 EU Global Strategy, which had already urged the Union to learn what the then High Representative Josep Borrell later called the language of power. More concretely, the European Council established the Security Action for Europe, known as SAFE, in May 2025, reinforcing the European Defence Industry Instrument in order to expand joint procurement and strengthen the continent’s defense industrial base. These measures, the paper suggests, represent more than incremental policy adjustments. They signal an emerging recognition that the governance architecture of the EU, historically optimized for market integration and regulation, must now extend into domains that member states have jealously guarded as symbols of sovereignty.

The second dynamic examined in the study concerns Germany’s evolving role in European defense, a topic the author treats as one of the most consequential and most ambivalent dimensions of the current transformation. For decades, Germany was characterized in the scholarly literature as the EU’s reluctant hegemon, an economic giant whose political culture, historical memory, and constitutional constraints made it unwilling to translate its economic strength into military leadership. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Chancellor Olaf Scholz to declare a Zeitenwende, a historic turning point, announcing a fundamental reorientation of German security policy and a special fund for rearmament. Yet the paper highlights the dilemmas that persist beneath this rhetorical shift. German rearmament raises difficult questions about burden-sharing within the EU, about the appropriate relationship between national capabilities and collective European instruments, and about how a militarily stronger Germany would be embedded in European institutions so as to reassure rather than alarm its neighbors.

The third dynamic identified in the analysis is the emergence of a political nucleus for European defense and foreign policy through intergovernmental and minilateral cooperation. Rather than a grand treaty-based leap toward a federal European army, the paper observes that the most significant developments are occurring in smaller, flexible formats. The Weimar Triangle, bringing together France, Germany, and Poland, is cited as one such grouping with the potential to lead on both security and industrial policy. The Franco-German embedded bilateralism that scholars Ulrich Krotz and Joachim Schild have documented as the historical engine of European integration is being supplemented by wider coalitions of the willing and able. This minilateral pattern reflects what the author, drawing on his earlier work on intergovernmentalism in EU crises, sees as a recurring feature of European integration: progress tends to occur through improvised, crisis-driven arrangements negotiated among a small set of pivotal states, which may later be generalized to the Union as a whole.

The paper situates these contemporary developments within a longer intellectual history of transatlantic asymmetry. Robert Kagan’s influential formulation of Americans being from Mars and Europeans from Venus captured a period in which Europe, sheltered under American protection, could afford to invest in civilian and normative power while the United States exercised hard power. The paper also invokes Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of the end of history, the post-Cold War expectation that liberal democracy and American-led order would face no fundamental challenger, and notes how that expectation has given way to a multipolar international system in which Europe must define its own position. Even Renaissance political thought, the author suggests in a historical aside drawing on Guicciardini’s account of Italy’s state system, offers precedents for how middle powers navigate between larger protectors and their own security imperatives. The point of these references is to underline that the current moment is not without historical parallel, even though its specific configuration is unprecedented.

Among the most sensitive questions the paper surveys is the nuclear dimension of European autonomy. A forum in the journal Survival in 2024 debated the prospects for a European nuclear deterrent, and a subsequent 2025 analysis by Lawrence Freedman examined the here and now of Europe’s nuclear options. The paper treats these debates as emblematic of the deeper transformation underway: if American extended deterrence becomes unreliable, European states must at least consider what strategic autonomy would mean at the highest level of escalation. The author does not present a European bomb as an imminent or settled prospect, but the very fact that such discussions have moved from the margins to the mainstream of strategic commentary illustrates how far the terms of the debate have shifted under the pressure of American retrenchment. Similarly, tensions over technology policy, including American criticism of European digital regulation described by the EU Institute for Security Studies as deepening the EU-US rift, show that the rebalancing extends well beyond defense into economic and regulatory affairs.

The paper’s conclusion is deliberately measured. Europe, Scotto argues, may be entering a post-American phase, but this phase is not defined by rupture with Washington. Rather, it is defined by the potential, still unfulfilled, for a rebalanced partnership with the United States and for a more autonomous European role in a multipolar order. The distinction matters: the analysis does not predict a clean break, nor does it claim that European strategic autonomy is already achieved. Instead, it identifies the institutional, industrial, and political building blocks that are being laid, from SAFE procurement instruments to German rearmament to minilateral defense coalitions, and asks whether they can cohere into durable governance. The answer, the paper suggests, will depend on whether Europe can convert crisis-driven improvisation into permanent capability, a challenge that has defeated earlier generations of European strategists but that the current conjuncture makes unusually urgent.

For observers of European politics, the study offers a framework for interpreting the accelerating stream of defense announcements, procurement deals, and diplomatic realignments emerging from Brussels and national capitals. Its central claim, that Trump operates less as a cause than as a catalyst of European governance change, implies that the transformation will not reverse with a change of administration in Washington. The unresolved questions of European defense, foreign policy coordination, and political integration that the American presidency has thrust into the open are, on this account, structural rather than episodic. Whether Europe seizes the moment to build governance commensurate with its economic weight, or continues to rely on an increasingly conditional American guarantee, remains the defining question of the continent’s security policy for the decade ahead.

Subject of Research: The impact of US repositioning under Trump on European Union defense and governance integration

Article Title: Toward a post-American Europe? Trump as a catalyst for EU governance

Article References: Scotto, M. (2025). Toward a post-American Europe? Trump as a catalyst for EU governance. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 433-443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00128-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00128-6

Keywords: Donald Trump, European Union, EU governance, European defense, NATO, strategic autonomy, transatlantic relations, Germany, intergovernmentalism, multipolarity, foreign policy, defense industry

The theoretical foundation of the analysis rests on the classical triad of deterrence: capability, credibility and communication. Capability means survivable second-strike forces, typically a triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. Credibility exists when an adversary believes retaliation will actually follow if a red line is crossed, a belief shaped by doctrine, political will and alliance obligations. Communication involves signaling what behavior is unacceptable while preserving useful ambiguity. During the Cold War, mutual assured destruction anchored these three elements in a bipolar standoff with clearly constructed escalation ladders. Today, the study argues, asymmetrical arsenals, emerging technologies and cross-domain interactions have stretched deterrence far beyond simple mutual assured destruction toward concepts of flexible response and tailored deterrence.

Hybrid warfare, as defined in the review following Frank Hoffman’s framework, is the coordinated use of conventional force, cyber operations, disinformation, economic coercion, proxy forces and legal manipulation, or lawfare, to achieve strategic objectives without formally declaring war. Its subset, gray-zone activity, deliberately blurs attribution, escalation and the distinction between state and non-state actors. The author distinguishes the two with concrete examples: Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea involved hybrid tools such as deniable forces and cyber-attacks but crossed into conventional military operations once troops entered the peninsula, whereas the 2017 NotPetya cyber-attack achieved destructive effect without any physical incursion, remaining firmly in the gray zone. What makes contemporary hybrid warfare distinctive is not novelty, since propaganda and proxy wars are ancient instruments of statecraft, but the speed and coordination that digital technologies enable.

The central theoretical claim is that nuclear deterrence casts a shadow under which hybrid competition flourishes through three mechanisms. First, the perceived risks of escalation prevent direct military confrontation between nuclear powers. Second, a credibility gap opens between nuclear threats and hybrid actions: threatening nuclear retaliation against a cyber intrusion or an election interference campaign appears disproportionate and therefore incredible. Third, the cumulative effect of many individually minor sub-threshold actions can shift regional balances of power without ever triggering escalation. This is a modern extension of the stability-instability paradox first articulated by Glenn Snyder, which held that strategic nuclear stability permits lower levels of conflict. The review argues the paradox has become more pronounced in the hybrid era, and that adversaries increasingly operate in realms where nuclear threats are neither credible nor proportionate.

The empirical cases are drawn from Ukraine, NATO’s eastern flank and the Indo-Pacific. The war in Ukraine is presented as the most demanding test: nuclear deterrence did not prevent Russia’s conventional invasion of February 2022, but it has constrained direct combat between Russia and NATO. Russian nuclear signaling, including public references to strategic forces, has sought to limit Western intervention, while NATO members have supplied Ukraine with military, financial and intelligence support without direct intervention, demonstrating calibrated escalation management. The absence of direct NATO-Russia combat suggests deterrence remains structurally intact, while the ongoing large-scale conventional war shows it cannot stop sub-nuclear conflict when core interests are perceived to be at stake. The study also notes that Western sanctions, cyber activity and intelligence sharing constitute hybrid instruments in their own right, underscoring the author’s deliberately symmetrical treatment of all major powers.

The United States case illustrates how a nuclear umbrella enables cyber coercion. The Stuxnet malware, developed jointly with Israel and deployed against Iranian nuclear centrifuges between 2009 and 2010, physically destroyed roughly a thousand centrifuges and set back Iran’s program by an estimated eighteen to twenty-four months without prompting an overt military response. The review argues Iran’s restraint reflected an assessment that escalating beyond a cyber operation under the American nuclear umbrella was unacceptable. The 2022 US Nuclear Posture Review explicitly identifies strategic competition below the nuclear threshold as the principal threat, and the doctrine of tailored deterrence seeks response options across the full spectrum of conflict, though critics such as James Acton warn that blurring conventional and nuclear distinctions raises the risk of miscalculation.

Russia, holding roughly 5,580 warheads with 1,674 deployed on strategic delivery systems, explicitly frames nuclear weapons in its doctrine as means of escalation management, and its 2020 nuclear deterrence principles widened the conditions under which nuclear use might be considered. This ambiguity raises escalation thresholds in the adversary’s mind while Moscow conducts conventional and hybrid operations beneath them. The NotPetya attack, attributed to Russian military intelligence by US, British and Dutch agencies and causing more than ten billion dollars in global damage, drew sanctions and diplomatic expulsions but no military response, which the review interprets as evidence that nuclear deterrence shields even the most destructive hybrid operations from conventional retaliation. China presents a different profile: a rapidly expanding arsenal projected to grow from roughly 350 warheads in 2020 to nearly 1,500 by 2035, a declared no-first-use policy, and gray-zone coercion through maritime militia operations such as the 2012 Scarborough Shoal confrontation, where state-coordinated civilian vessels denied Philippine access without triggering a military response.

Several structural findings sharpen the analysis. Attribution ambiguity, the inability to identify a hybrid attacker in near real time, undermines deterrent signaling because threats cannot credibly be directed at an unconfirmed actor. Cumulative coercion aggregates sub-threshold incidents, each too minor to justify retaliation, into a strategic shift. Perhaps most dangerously, cyber operations against early-warning systems, command-and-control networks or dual-use satellites create entanglement risks: if a state believes its nuclear deterrent is compromised, it may adopt more aggressive launch postures, raising the probability of escalation through miscalculation rather than intent. Meanwhile, the collapse of the arms control architecture, including the 2002 withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the 2019 demise of the INF Treaty and the expiration of New START in 2026, has removed verification mechanisms, transparency and crisis communication channels that once reduced the likelihood of miscalculation.

The review also challenges the assumption that democracies are structurally constrained in hybrid competition. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, launched despite mass public opposition and without UN Security Council authorization, and covert cyber and drone operations conducted with limited accountability demonstrate that democratic institutions shape but do not prevent coercive action. Conversely, authoritarian regimes face their own constraints: Russia must manage coalitions with China and India, while China balances regional assertiveness against economic stability. The author concludes that the democracy-autocracy distinction is an analytical failure for assessing nuclear signaling and hybrid behavior, and that credibility is better evaluated through strategic culture, alliance commitments and domestic political structure. Credibility itself has become a multi-domain, dynamic property, resting not only on warhead counts but on political coherence, narrative control and alliance cohesion, all of which hybrid disinformation campaigns deliberately target.

The policy prescriptions follow directly from the diagnosis. Rebuilding strategic stability requires renewed arms control, even limited agreements on notification and data exchange, plus confidence-building measures against cyber interference in nuclear command systems. Deterrence by denial deserves priority at sub-nuclear levels: cyber resilience, electoral protection, critical infrastructure hardening, information literacy and economic diversification all raise the cost of gray-zone operations without escalating risk. Crisis communication channels, transparency in military exercises, and international norms prohibiting cyber interference with nuclear command structures would reduce the danger of inadvertent escalation. The study proposes an integrated cross-domain model combining nuclear credibility, political legitimacy, alliance cohesion and societal resilience. Its conclusion is sobering but precise: nuclear deterrence is neither obsolete nor absolute. It remains structurally powerful as a ceiling on total war, yet operationally constrained beneath that ceiling, and the struggle for influence among the great powers will increasingly be decided in the ambiguous, cumulative and deniable forms of competition that flourish in its shadow.

Subject of Research: The effectiveness of nuclear deterrence against hybrid and gray-zone warfare among major powers

Article Title: Nuclear deterrence in the age of hybrid warfare

Article References: Edmond, C. (2026). Nuclear deterrence in the age of hybrid warfare. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00419-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00419-1

Keywords: nuclear deterrence, hybrid warfare, gray zone, strategic stability, stability-instability paradox, cross-domain deterrence, arms control, escalation, cyber operations, Russia, China, NATO

The analytical core of the article rests on the concept of transactionalism in international relations. Unlike traditional diplomacy, which embeds bilateral relationships in institutions, treaties, and shared norms, transactional diplomacy evaluates every interaction as a discrete exchange with measurable gains and losses. Linden notes that American presidents have always used elements of transactional foreign policy, but argues that the current approach differs in both degree and kind. Where earlier administrations balanced deal-making with commitment to alliances and democratic norms, the present model elevates the deal above the alliance itself. Personal relationships between leaders substitute for institutional channels, and long-standing partners are recast as competitors who have taken advantage of American generosity.

The economic dimension of this transformation is perhaps the most visible. European allies, historically treated as the cornerstone of American trade and security partnerships, have been threatened with sweeping tariffs and characterized as beneficiaries of an unbalanced relationship. In July 2025, the United States and the European Union reached a trade deal that the White House celebrated as a massive achievement, yet European leaders publicly criticized the agreement as unfair, with some describing its signing as a dark day for the union. The asymmetry between the American framing of the deal and the European reception of it illustrates the broader dynamic: what Washington presents as a win reflects a bargaining posture in which allied prosperity is treated as a cost to the United States rather than a shared foundation of the transatlantic economy, which by most measures remains the largest bilateral economic relationship in the world.

Territorial rhetoric has pushed this transactional logic into territory that analysts once considered unthinkable. The administration repeatedly floated the acquisition of Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, prompting a January 2025 opinion poll showing that 85 percent of Greenlanders did not want to join the United States. Similar suggestions about making Canada the fifty-first American state circulated in late 2024. Linden argues that such statements are not merely rhetorical flourishes but expressions of a worldview in which the sovereignty of even the closest allies is negotiable. The suggestion that the United States might take over Gaza, described in early 2025 as transforming the territory into a Riviera of the Middle East, extended the same logic to the Middle East and alarmed European governments already struggling to coordinate a common position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Policy toward the war in Ukraine reveals how transactionalism has sacrificed traditional unity. Rather than sustaining the coalition-based support model of previous years, the administration reframed assistance as a commercial proposition. In May 2025, Trump approved the first shipment of arms to Ukraine, but as sales rather than aid, a shift documented by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker recorded that Europe had become the leading spender on weapons production for Ukraine, a milestone that underscores both European resolve and the widening gap in burden-sharing narratives. At the same time, the president publicly blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the war following a massive Russian attack, and a summit with Vladimir Putin in August 2025 concluded without agreement but with considerable ceremony. The mixed signals extended to sanctions: while Washington imposed measures on top Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil in October 2025, it earlier disbanded a task force targeting Russian oligarchs and granted Hungary a one-year exemption from penalties related to Russian oil purchases.

European far-right parties that had celebrated Trump’s return found themselves in an uncomfortable position when his Ukraine stance diverged from their own. Several of his key European allies publicly faulted his approach to the conflict, a rare instance of criticism from within his ideological camp. Meanwhile, the administration’s engagement with European politics took a more direct form. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vice President J. D. Vance delivered a message that shocked European audiences, promoting positions he had long advanced domestically and signaling sympathy for movements outside the political mainstream. Linden treats this intervention as evidence that personalist diplomacy does not stop at the border of allied domestic politics but actively reshapes them.

The security consequences for Europe have been immediate and measurable. At the NATO summit in The Hague in June 2025, allies agreed to boost defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product, a target the White House credited to presidential leadership but which European capitals largely interpreted as a response to doubts about American reliability. Germany announced plans to double its defense spending within five years, and the European Commission’s ReArm Europe plan, presented under the Readiness 2030 banner, is designed to boost defense funding across member states. The United Kingdom and the European Union signed a dedicated Security and Defence Partnership in May 2025, institutionalizing defense cooperation between the two blocs independent of NATO structures. Twenty-six countries committed in September 2025 to deploying troops to Ukraine in a postwar framework, a coalition of the willing assembled precisely because guarantees from Washington could no longer be assumed.

Trade diversification follows the same logic of hedging. European leaders held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in July 2025, with Brussels calling for real solutions even as trust remained thin, and the expanding BRICS group offers an alternative pole for economic alignment. Linden’s forthcoming work on EU-China relations suggests that Europe’s search for partners is driven less by enthusiasm for Beijing than by the arithmetic of reducing dependence on an unpredictable ally. The erosion of American democratic leadership compounds the problem. Carnegie Endowment analysts have documented American democratic backsliding in comparative perspective, and Freedom House’s 2025 report on freedom in the world describes an uphill battle to safeguard rights globally. When the country that long anchored the democratic world exhibits its own institutional strain, the normative foundation of the transatlantic relationship weakens alongside its material one.

The study also documents the costs to institutional transparency and democratic norms within the alliance itself. The disclosure that senior American officials, including Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shared attack plans for a March strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen through an unsecured messaging channel raised questions about operational discipline at the highest levels. The administration declined to participate in a United Nations conference on a two-state solution, and a June 2025 report by the Office of the Special EU Representative for Human Rights suggested that Israel’s actions might violate the longstanding EU-Israel association agreement, exposing further divergence between European legal-normative frameworks and American diplomatic practice. European favorability toward the United States fell sharply following Trump’s return, according to YouGov polling, reflecting a public-level cooling that mirrors the elite-level estrangement.

Linden’s conclusion is that the transformation is structural rather than episodic. The push for Europe to reduce defense dependence on the United States, the drive to find other trade partners, and the erosion of American democratic leadership together point toward a Europe that may be post-American in orientation even if it remains Western in identity. Analysts such as Mario Draghi have urged Europe to turn skepticism into action, arguing that the continent possesses the scale to act autonomously if it chooses to aggregate its economic and technological capacity. Whether the transactional turn proves to be a lasting rupture or a catalyst that finally forces European strategic consolidation is the central question the article leaves open. What is clear, on the evidence assembled, is that the assumptions underpinning eight decades of transatlantic order, that allies share interests, that institutions outlast administrations, and that democracy anchors the alliance, can no longer be taken as given.

Subject of Research: The impact of transactional US foreign policy on transatlantic relations and European strategic autonomy

Article Title: Trump and Europe: a transactional transformation

Article References: Linden, R. H. (2025). Trump and Europe: a transactional transformation. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 444-456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00129-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00129-5

Keywords: transactionalism, US-European relations, NATO, tariffs, Ukraine, Russia, European Union, democracy, defense spending, trade policy, Greenland, strategic autonomy

The starting point of the analysis is the sheer unpredictability of the new American posture. Political positions, the paper observes, now change like daily specials on a menu, and a flood of true and false information makes fact-based political discourse increasingly difficult. The United States under Trump 2.0 still wants to be a hegemonic power, but no longer a hegemon in the sense of the liberal, rules-based world order that it largely built itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made this explicit in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, describing the post-Cold War belief that all nations would join a democratic, Western-led community as a dangerous delusion rather than a fantasy. For a political community like the EU, which is founded on rules- and values-based reliability, this is more than uncomfortable news; it is the counter-concept to everything the supranational project was designed to represent.

Kotzur grounds the debate in etymology and political philosophy. Autonomy, from the ancient Greek autos and nomos, means the ability to live under one’s own laws, to make informed and uncoerced decisions. Strategy derives from the art of leading an army. Combining the two, the EU implicitly makes a dual claim: the capacity to decide independently, and the capacity to do so in light of its own interests and values. Strategic autonomy therefore fuses factuality and normativity. It demands a pragmatic view of what is realistically possible and a self-confident view of what ought ideally to be done. Crucially, the paper identifies two preconditions that apply across all dimensions of the concept. Autonomy does not mean total self-sufficiency; it means not being overly reliant on any single other actor, and it means possessing genuine influence, understood not as coercion but as the ability to build sustainable partnerships.

French President Emmanuel Macron articulated the vision of strategic autonomy, or even strategic sovereignty, in 2017, partly in response to internal crises and partly to Trump’s first-term attacks on NATO. For too long, the analysis notes, other member states including Germany ignored the ambition. Macron was not proposing a new political theory of integration or a radical rebalancing of powers between Brussels and the capitals. He was calling for a concrete power to act, above all the potential to become a serious but more independent global player in security and defence. The second Trump term, with its more elaborate version of Trumpism, has given that call renewed urgency and taught Europeans, rather the hard way, that their honeymoon with history is over.

That honeymoon had deep roots. From the founding of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the EU saw itself as a pure force for peace, a normative power that could afford to neglect hard military capability because it believed it could rely completely on American protection. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine exposed this self-conception as short-sighted, and Trump’s tariff politics have done the same for the EU’s role as a global economic player. An impactful peacekeeping actor, the paper argues, must be ready to defend itself and capable of military action if it wants to be taken seriously as a global peacemaker. The geopolitical awakening triggered by the war and by shifting American priorities now demands innovative readjustment in all three dimensions of the Union’s claimed abilities to act.

On the geopolitical dimension, the analysis traces the pressure back to the Helsinki Final Act, the mid-1970s foundation of European security that Russia shattered with its invasion of Ukraine and its attempt to unilaterally reshape the continent’s security architecture. This breach creates military as well as political pressure and serves as a litmus test for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and its integral defence component. The Union’s legal competence is comprehensive, extending to all areas of foreign policy and all matters of security, including conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict rehabilitation. Trumpism has intensified the strain, through demands for fairer burden-sharing within NATO, nonchalant attacks on the territorial sovereignty of Greenland, and contradictory remarks on alliance obligations, while simultaneously seeking to isolate EU member states from one another. Paradoxically, the paper suggests, Trump acts as a catalyst for EU governance.

Reform options are on the table. One would be to communitise foreign, security and defence policy, replacing intergovernmental unanimity with qualified majority voting and gradually building a Security and Defence Union. Another, less likely scenario would remove these competences from EU structures altogether. Neither appears probable. More plausible, in keeping with the piecemeal engineering that has shaped integration since its beginnings, are incremental steps of the kind outlined in the Strategic Compass of 2022: joint risk analysis and a gradual shift of competences to the EU level. Twenty-five member states have already established Permanent Structured Cooperation under the Lisbon Treaty, a framework that seeks to balance national sovereignty with credible collective defence. Such coordination, the paper stresses, requires a shared strategic culture and, above all, money. Strategic autonomy does not come for free. Early in March 2025, ahead of the EU crisis summit on Ukraine, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a plan to rearm Europe, including greater flexibility in debt rules, which the Commission says could mobilise almost 800 billion euros. Without Trump’s pressure, the paper notes, it would never have reached the Commission’s agenda. Discussions of a French nuclear umbrella and Franco-British cooperation on a coalition of the willing for Ukraine point in the same direction.

The economic dimension is equally turbulent. At the 2025 Davos World Economic Forum, von der Leyen declared that the cooperative world order imagined twenty-five years ago had not materialised, and that the world had entered an era of fierce geostrategic competition in which sanctions, export controls and tariffs are used routinely. Trumpism has adopted an aggressive tariff policy that disregards international trade norms, yet the Union still seeks to stand for rules-based multilateral trade, the lowering of barriers, a revival of World Trade Organization principles, and goals such as the European Green Deal and carbon neutrality by 2050. At the same time, the paper highlights an uncomfortable concession: the European Commission has admitted that its own trade deal with the United States most likely does not meet WTO standards, and the promise of purchasing American weapon systems after a meeting at Trump’s private golf club can be read as surrendering a degree of autonomy. The author warns of a neo-feudal style of politics in which strategic accommodation replaces strategic autonomy. Even so, he argues, transatlantic cooperation is not over; its parameters have simply changed fundamentally. Europe must now confront the United States as a strong actor with its own agenda, relying on its economic strength, innovation capacity and proven ability to generate new integration dynamics, as shown by recent trade agreements with Indonesia and New Zealand and the opportunities presented by MERCOSUR.

The third dimension is normative. Article 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union commits the Union to upholding and promoting its values, contributing to peace, sustainable development, free and fair trade, the eradication of poverty, human rights and the strict observance of international law. Trumpism stands in stark contrast: drastic cuts to foreign aid, defiance of international norms such as unlawful attacks on smuggling boats in the Caribbean, and broad threats to rules-based multilateralism. Yet the paper recalls that the EU’s self-image as a legal community, a creation of law in the words of the first Commission President Walter Hallstein, has always been more than functional. Law, conceived as an antidote to force and a carrier of a new spirit of cooperation, can become the cement holding divergent forces together. The EU should therefore continue to act as a mediator for democracy, the rule of law and universal human rights, fill the gaps Trumpism has opened in multilateralism, and pursue genuine dialogue on an equal footing, especially with the countries of the Global South.

The deeper lesson, Kotzur concludes, is that the old transatlantic normality was always partly an illusion. Even before Trump, America’s advocacy of law-based multilateralism was driven to some extent by an America First mentality, and scepticism toward multilateral institutions has grown as China, Russia and Global South states assert their own right to shape international norms. After the first Trump presidency, European leaders erred in dismissing him as a temporary phenomenon. The new normality demands pragmatism, conceptual clarity and self-assurance: the capacity to defend itself as a geopolitical actor, new trade partners and free trade agreements as an economic actor, and honest alliances built on mutual understanding as a norm-setter. Values and interests, realism and idealism, should not be played off against each other in dichotomous thinking. Trump 2.0, the analysis suggests, is keeping Europe on its toes, which may not be such a bad thing if old Europe wants to reinvent itself as a better version of what it has been so far.

Subject of Research: European Union strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism and the erosion of multilateralism

Article Title: Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism

Article References: Kotzur, M. (2025). Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 457-466. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00133-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00133-9

Keywords: strategic autonomy, European Union, Trumpism, multilateralism, Common Security and Defence Policy, NATO, trade policy, normative power, Global South, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, World Trade Organization

The quantitative contrast between NATO’s first and most recent strategic documents is striking. The 1991 Strategic Concept, drafted amid the disintegration of the Soviet Union, described the security environment as fundamentally transformed and mentioned Russia only twice, each time in the context of cooperation. The word cooperation appeared 37 times in that document, while deterrence appeared just 14 times. The 2022 Strategic Concept, adopted at the Madrid Summit after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, references Russia 23 times and characterizes it as the most significant and direct threat to Allied security. In that document, deterrence appears 31 times while cooperation appears only 12. These word-level shifts, the study argues, quantify a deep reorientation of the alliance’s institutional identity from partnership-building toward territorial defense and deterrence.

The study emphasizes that this transformation did not begin in February 2022. Warning signs accumulated over years, starting with Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, followed by the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in the Donbas region. At the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO agreed to deploy four multinational battlegroups to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland under the Enhanced Forward Presence framework, a move described in the literature as a historic day for the Baltic states. These battalion-sized units, each led by a framework nation such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, or the United States, were deliberately designed as tripwires: forces too small to repel an invasion alone but large enough to guarantee that any attack would immediately draw the entire alliance into conflict. Since 2022, all four battlegroups have been expanded to brigade level, and NATO’s overall response force has grown to 300,000 troops on high readiness.

The composition and capability of these forward deployments vary considerably, and the study documents these disparities in detail. The British-led battlegroup in Estonia has maintained roughly 1,200 troops with heavy armor including Challenger 2 tanks, while the Canadian-led group in Latvia has struggled with force generation and depends heavily on contributions from Spain, Italy, and Poland. The German-led battlegroup in Lithuania is notable for incorporating Patriot air defense systems, reflecting Berlin’s deepening commitment since 2022, and the American-led formation in Poland is the largest, supported by artillery, aviation assets, and a division-level headquarters. Total forward-deployed personnel on NATO’s eastern flank rose from approximately 5,000 in 2014 to more than 40,000 in 2024, although the study notes that quality remains inconsistent across contributors.

Beyond conventional forces, the research highlights how NATO has adapted to a threat environment that is now explicitly multi-domain. The 2016 Warsaw Summit formally recognized cyberspace as an operational domain, and the alliance has acknowledged that cyberattacks can in principle trigger Article 5 collective defense obligations. Attribution, however, remains a formidable technical and legal obstacle, since identifying the origin of a cyber operation with sufficient certainty to justify a collective response is often impossible. NATO has also confronted hybrid threats, a category of aggression that combines cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, and political subversion while deliberately staying below the threshold of armed attack. The alliance established a Hybrid Centre of Excellence in Helsinki and created Cyber Rapid Response Teams, while also setting minimum national resilience standards covering critical infrastructure, supply chain security, and societal resistance to manipulation.

Perhaps the most dramatic empirical evidence of changed threat perceptions came from two countries that had avoided military alliances for decades. Finland, which had pursued neutrality since the Cold War era of Finlandization, saw public support for NATO membership surge from roughly 30 percent in 2021 to more than 80 percent in 2022. Swedish support rose from about 35 percent to over 70 percent. Both nations applied for membership, and their accession fundamentally redrew Europe’s strategic map. Finland’s entry brought a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia inside the alliance, roughly doubling the NATO-Russia frontier and complicating Russian military planning in Northern Europe. Finland contributes a modern air force transitioning to F-35 aircraft, while Sweden brings one of the Baltic region’s most capable navies, including Gotland-class submarines designed for shallow littoral waters, along with extensive Arctic and sub-Arctic operational expertise.

The accession process, however, also exposed the internal frictions that consensus-based decision-making can create. Turkey delayed Sweden’s membership for more than a year over disputes concerning Kurdish organizations and extradition requests, and Hungary’s ratification also lagged for largely political reasons. The study argues that these episodes demonstrate how even strategically urgent decisions can be held hostage by bilateral grievances, a structural vulnerability inherent in an alliance of now 32 members that operates by unanimity. Burden-sharing presents a parallel challenge. At the 2014 Wales Summit, NATO set a guideline of 2 percent of GDP for defense spending, a benchmark met by only three members at the time. By 2024, 23 of 32 members had reached or exceeded the target, with Poland at 4.04 percent, the United States at roughly 3.5 percent, and the United Kingdom at about 2.29 percent. Yet the study notes that spending quality matters as much as quantity: only seven members met the separate 20 percent benchmark for major equipment investment, and much of the new money has gone to personnel costs rather than capabilities.

European defense industrial capacity emerges as a critical weakness. The study cites assessments that Europe’s defense industrial base lacks the scale to sustain a major conflict without American support, a concern underscored by the European Union’s failure to deliver its pledge of one million artillery shells to Ukraine within twelve months. Decades of post-Cold War contraction and fragmentation have left national industries without economies of scale, producing deep reliance on United States equipment. This dependency intersects uncomfortably with Washington’s strategic pivot toward Asia and with ongoing debates over European strategic autonomy. France and others have pushed for the European Union to develop independent military capacity through initiatives such as PESCO and the European Defence Fund, while frontline states including Poland and the Baltic members remain skeptical of anything that might dilute the American security guarantee. The 2022 Strategic Concept attempts to square this circle by welcoming EU defense initiatives while insisting they remain supplementary to NATO, which it declares the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security.

Theoretically, the study frames NATO’s endurance through three complementary lenses. Realism, particularly Stephen Walt’s balance of threat theory, explains the alliance’s resurgence as a rational response to Russian power, proximity, and demonstrated intent to use force. Liberal institutionalism, drawing on Robert Keohane’s work, accounts for NATO’s survival after its original adversary vanished, since dense institutionalized relationships generate their own inertia by reducing transaction costs and stabilizing expectations. Constructivism, following Alexander Wendt’s insight that anarchy is what states make of it, explains why former Warsaw Pact states sought membership not merely for security guarantees but to affirm their identities as democratic European nations. The study concludes that NATO’s future relevance will depend on whether it can sustain a political coalition capable of supporting both military deterrence and continuous innovation in technology and strategic thought, a test that an increasingly unpredictable security environment will keep applying for years to come.

Subject of Research: NATO's post-Cold War institutional transformation and its response to Russian revisionism in the European security environment

Article Title: NATO’s evolution and European security dynamics

Article References: Edmond, C. (2026). NATO’s evolution and European security dynamics. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00594-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00594-1

Keywords: NATO, European security, collective defense, deterrence, Russia, Ukraine war, hybrid threats, cyber defense, Finland, Sweden, burden sharing, strategic autonomy