NATO’s Raison D’être After the Cold War

Abstract

The aim of this Thesis is to analyze how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) perceived threats have changed since the end of the Cold War and what reasonings NATO and others bring for its continued existence in the 21st century. To do so, the Thesis chronologically explores NATO’s perception of threats to its members in the post-Cold War era, in addition to independent scholars’ opinions on NATO’s continued existence. Using a combined methodology of comparative discourse analysis of 22 speeches of NATO Secretary Generals (1990-2016) and six indepth interviews with NATO officials experts, it was determined that unlike the Cold War when the primary threat was viewed by NATO as the USSR and thus singular, in the post-Cold War era, the Alliance’s threat perceptions have been multiple. Analysis of NATO Secretary Generals’ speeches revealed that in the post-Cold War era, the word “Russia” was spoken 122 times with a negative connotations and “terrorism” 70 times, while a significant stress was also put on possible “future” threats to the Alliance members. The study revealed that NATO’s perceived threats after the Cold War have evolved from ethnic conflicts in the Balkans to terrorism, to Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine and to undetermined future insecurities. The combination of these threats were considered as the determinants of NATO’s raison d’être after the Cold War. This study also found that there are differences in justifying NATO’s existence with some scholars disagreeing with NATO’s official justifications of politico-humanitarian reasons of conflict resolution, democratizing, peace-inducing, and combating terrorism and rouge states, arguing, instead, that NATO exists to dominate Europe, to earn profits from weapons sales for its powerful members, and to deter Russia in what some perceive as the reality of a “New Cold War.”