At the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, Lord Hastings Ismay — the organisation’s first Secretary-General — described the alliance’s purpose as to ”keep the Soviets out, the Americans in and the Germans down.” This maxim still rings true today. The future of the alliance is challenged by similar questions to those that could have been asked in the late 1940s: keeping peace in Europe; maintaining US commitment to mutual defence; and ensuring unity amongst European nation states. Just as the architects of the post-1945 world order founded NATO as a means of meeting their contemporary challenges, the NATO of today must adapt to meet the threats of the twenty-first Century: crucially, undertake an alliance-wide review and to develop its bureaucratic institutions.

Currently, NATO is under threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine in 2022 destroyed the idea of Europe as a post-conflict continent, and many member states have subsequently provided assistance to the Kyiv regime from their own austerity-battered militaries. The picture, however, is bleak, with the persistent presence of populists, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Slovakia’s Robert Fico, who have public sympathies towards Moscow and persistently challenge the necessity of NATO operations. The alliance also fears the return of President Donald Trump after he suggested he would not protect nations that failed to reach the target 2% of GDP on defence, shattering the principle of collective defence.

European nations need to convince the upcoming US President Donald Trump of the importance of collective defence and of continued assistance to Ukraine. This will require a different military and diplomatic strategy that allows the alliance to effectively coordinate and contend with the return of an overtly aggressive state lurking on NATO’s eastern border. Embarking upon such a task will allow the European alliance to get ahead and prepare for future uncertainties. This can emerge from any of three things: reviewing existing alliance capabilities, the modernisation of NATO’s command structure and developing robust munitions stockpile infrastructure.

The critical first step is a comprehensive, alliance-wide integrated review 一 a wholesale assessment of existing capabilities and analysis of their ability to meet any potential threat. Europe is reliant on the United States’ commitment to Article 5. An integrated review would ease that burden. It would be a step towards achieving European military autonomy by ensuring that European military planners are all singing from the same hymn sheet. This is necessary to ensure that the continent could prevent a Russian invasion if the US forgoes its membership, as Trump has alluded to doing in the past, or even becomes entangled in a conflict in the Asia-Pacific as relations with China continue to deteriorate. The US and Europe will remain critical partners for the foreseeable future but there can be no complacency in the capitals of Europe that the world is changing. Europe’s militaries need to change with it.

Conducting the review should occur alongside the modernisation of NATO’s command structure. This requires a Joint Force Command, a regional headquarters for the alliance’s Northern members 一 Norway, Sweden, and Finland 一 and a new civilian and military body specifically tasked with overseeing the review’s delivery and ensuring members comply. This would change the dynamics of the alliance by imposing a top-down structure, ensuring that member states are providing enough resources to defend the alliance by publicly speaking out against ‘free riding’. The new body tasked with implementing the review would likely call on all members to meet the NATO target of 2% spending on defence and, in the increasingly tense geopolitical climate, to surpass it. Collective defence is the backbone of western military doctrine, but that can only be delivered by coordinating with militaries across the alliance.

Thirdly, the alliance must tackle existing issues with munitions stockpiles. Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, member states have realised that their heavy ammunition stockpiles are woefully inadequate. However, before the alliance even begins enhancing production, it must first increase storage capacity. Even some of the alliance’s stronger members, like Britain and France, are struggling to house 30-days worth of ammunition. Establishing communal storage facilities, overseen by Joint Force Command, will help to provide additional capacity for members and it will help to coordinate future munition supplies to Ukraine.

Collective defence has kept NATO members safe for the past 80 years. With these critical reforms, the alliance could continue to protect freedom, democracy, and self-determination for the foreseeable future.

Jamie Tunsley is a Member of Bright Blue and a Research Assistant at RUSI. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.