Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book outlines North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) evolving post–Cold War mission to effect democratisation in target states and its encounter with illiberal challenges and backlashes. It offers a theoretical understanding of the material and ideational conditions under which a state or a group of states take on democratisation as a foreign policy goal. NATO encouraged democratic consolidation through forward-leaning integration culminating with the Bucharest Summit in 2008. NATO’s democratic advance through enlargement and partnerships tools was facilitated by the obvious lack of an opposing great power. NATO’s presence began as an under-resourced ambition to promote a democratic statehood, but the civilian surge brought resources closer to match ambitions. Opposition to NATO assumuing civilian and counterinsurgency capabilities accounted for the protracted adaptation to US pressure for a broader military-civilian conflation.