Publications

On its 75th anniversary, NATO has seized the opportunity to update its policy on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), a commitment that was made during the Vilnius Summit in 2023. A greater focus on deterrence and collective defence is a necessary update as the last iteration of the policy, released in 2018, did not fully articulate how WPS principles would be integrated into this core NATO task.

Threats to the southern flank do not represent such a direct, military, and imminent threat to NATO as Russia does on the Eastern flank, but they do endanger the security of NATO member states and regional partners as recognized in NATO’s Strategic Concept adopted in Madrid in 2022. Despite that recognition and the Alliance’s desire to pay equal attention to every threat in its 360° strategy, the eastern flank deserves much more attention in NATO’s planning than the southern flank.

NATO allies need to pay close attention to and learn from the war if they are serious about building up their own EDT capabilities. Specifically, NATO allies should draw three distinct lessons from the war so far. These are not about specific weapon systems, such as which drone has been the most promising, or how to integrate autonomy in the fighting process. Rather, they are more fundamental lessons and changes that the increasing use of new technologies have caused or enabled.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a defining moment for European security. It has been an attempt to introduce a new paradigm in European security with brutal military force in line with Moscow’s interests. Russia, together with China, aims to undermine the European and international order that was created and led by the US after the end of the Cold World War. Russian goals were presented in form of two draft treaties that included three major demands in December 2021.

The policy debate about NATO’s burden sharing tends to focus on European members’ reluctance or failure to meet the two-percent-of-GDP minimum defense spending target. Redressing the transatlantic budgetary misbalance is indeed warranted because of the possibility of a re-election next year of Donald Trump or a like-minded Republican candidate, who would use Europe’s under-spending as an argument for reducing or withdrawing U.S. support for NATO and Ukraine.

At the moment, NATO’s operational readiness centres around the “Single fuel policy”, which is based on fossil kerosene. At the Madrid NATO summit in 2020 the Alliance announced its goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. The resulting transition to renewable energy will bring new challenges to the armed forces of the Alliance. The energy systems will become more diverse and complex and thus will create more vulnerabilities. All these changes require an increased focus on all aspects of energy security and critical energy infrastructure protection.

The NATO summit undeniably constituted the focal point of Lithuania's political agenda in 2023. It can be argued that the big part of the nation became actively engaged in fervent deliberations, which revolved around inquiries into the Alliance's role within the framework of regional security, strategies for fortifying NATO's Eastern flank, and above all, the prospect of extending a promise of NATO membership to Ukraine in Vilnius.

This summer’s Vilnius Summit took place during an interesting time for NATO as an organization and the transatlantic community writ large. The Summit was full of anticipation, hope, concern, and determination in the months and weeks leading up to its commencing.

EESC presents an analytical study that provides an overview of the priorities, vision implementation, and policy changes enacted during the NATO Summit in Vilnius in 2023

The Baltic Sea region states continued a two-vector rally to increase and sustain military, financial, political, and economic support to Ukraine and strengthen the region's NATO military posture.

As NATO returns to its roots, founded on the unshaken principle of collective defense, allies situated on the eastern flank face both opportunity and an existential challenge stemming from the resurgence of Russian revanchism.

Security and defence partnerships in the region have developed most actively over the past decade under the Japan-led idea of “Free and Open Indo Pacific” (FOIP) among the “like-minded partners.”