ABSTRACT
Assessing the institutional mechanisms of crisis resilience of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intra-alliance crisis in the context of coping with a resurgent Russia, the following chapter provides a historical reflection of NATO’s collective action problems during and after the Cold War. While the legitimacy crisis of the 1960s was resolved through an emerging habit of consensus, the chapter shows that the great number of veto players and NATO’s generally more difficult post-Cold War action problems have hindered the mitigation of the crisis over how to cope with Russia in recent years. The institutional change so far implies a move of NATO from being a collective toward an autonomous actor, which allows it to better cope with the aggravated cooperation problems.
