NATO and the Missile Defense Challenge

• In Event: Alliances and War: Cooperation, Complication, and Conflict Among Allies

Abstract

In the early 2000s, missile defense appeared on the agenda of NATO, first as a theater-based mission and then, in 2010, in the form of territorial missile defense. While missile defense has since been considered a core mission of NATO, the build-up and operationalization of missile defense capabilities are far from settled. Not only have NATO members developed widely different approaches to missile defense—homeland missile defense systems by the United States, a naval theater system by the United Kingdom, and a land-based theater system by France—key questions about when and how to deploy these capabilities have remained somewhat unresolved. Building on a large number of semi-structured interviews with NATO staff member, civilian decision-makers, and military leaders in each of these countries as well as extensive primary and secondary source materials, I trace the development of NATO's missile defense mission, the pursuit of domestic capabilities, and the employment of national narratives around the latter two. In doing so, I will argue that, within each of these states, policymakers have distinct understandings of the future warfare—what I call “images of warfare"—and that this has shaped the development of the missile defense mission, beyond what the United States—as the first mover in this domain—had envisioned.

Author

• Sanne Verschuren, Brown University