One Plus Four: Charting NATO’s Future in an Age of Disruption

The Atlantic Alliance stands today at an historic inflection point, between a fading era of relative stability and a volatile, dangerous Age of Disruption. As this Task Force Report is being issued, Russian troops are poised to further invade NATO partner Ukraine. Should the deterrent efforts created by a fairly united NATO fail, this age of disruption will take a dramatic turn for the worse.

The Age of Disruption is global in nature and broad in scope. The Alliance faces strategic competition with a revisionist Russia and a militarily powerful and technologically advanced China, each of which seeks to disrupt the international order. Terrorists threaten our people. Disruptive challenges extend to emerging technologies that are changing the nature of competition and conflict and digital transformations that are upending the foundations of diplomacy and defense. The scale and complexity of critical economic, environmental, technological and human flows, as well as the dependency of many societies on such flows, have increased dramatically. Destructive capabilities unthinkable a few decades ago are now in the hands of big powers, smaller states, and non-state actors. Climate change and energy transitions pose new security dilemmas and amplify crises. Europe’s periphery has turned from a ring of friends to a ring of fire.

The Atlantic Alliance faces the most complex strategic environment in its 73-year history. North America and Europe must use the Alliance’s new Strategic Concept to reaffirm their mutual bonds, recast their partnership, and retool their institutions – particularly NATO – for the Age of Disruption.

NATO’s new Strategic Concept should be framed by an approach we call “One Plus Four.” The One is Alliance cohesion, which must be the central strategic underpinning of a new Concept. NATO must then be repositioned for current and future challenges, many of which are unconventional and unpredictable. This will require the Alliance to update and upgrade its three core tasks -- collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security – and to add a fourth core task: building comprehensive resilience to disruptive threats to allied societies.