Description
Since the end of the Cold War the evolution of Euro-Atlantic security institutions has attracted the interest of international relations theorists and historians alike. NATO has pursued a process of transformation and adaptation, which has allowed its expansion to former Soviet bloc states and its deployment outside of the Euro-Atlantic area in non-article 5 missions, before Russia’s recent resurgence prompted its European retrenchment. Nonetheless, despite its adaptation and resilience, the Alliance remains plagued by difficulties and uncertainties, which were crudely exposed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2019 remark that NATO has entered ‘cerebral death’. Similarly, since the early 1990s also the European Union has manifested a willingness to respond to the transforming geopolitical context and assert a role in security and defence. However, although since the early 2000s the Union has embarked on a number of peacekeeping and crisis management missions, member states have yet to establish truly effective European security and defence capabilities. While IR theorists have provided different and often conflicting interpretations of the path and future trajectories of Euro-Atlantic security institutions, historians have continued to privilege a mostly descriptive approach to account for their evolution. The paper will try to overcome this divide arguing that the future studies of Euro-Atlantic security institutions can only be fully appraised through the embracement of an eclectic approach capable of blending together historical and analytical perspectives.
