ABSTRACT
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, more commonly known simply as NATO, was established in 1949 primarily as a military alliance to provide for the territorial defence of democratic Western Europe against the communist Eastern bloc lead by Soviet Russia. Some 60 years later the Alliance finds itself in seemingly unconventional times fighting an unconventional war in Afghanistan. Soviet Russia is gone. The Warsaw Pact has disintegrated, replaced with renewed eastern democracies. The United States is a global superpower and Europe enjoys a peace never before seen on the continent. All of this has not led to the New World Order heralded by President George H. W. Bush, or the “end of history” as prophesized by Francis Fukuyama, or the end of NATO. Instead the West (used here synonymously with the North Atlantic Community) finds itself confronting a bizarre nexus of security risks that pose potentially catastrophic dangers. Globalization, open borders, failing states, global crime syndicates, religious fundamentalism, political alienation, poverty and disease come together in ever more catastrophic and fluid ways.
