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The main objectives of this book are to analyse the risks and dangers NATO faces in the current strategic environment and to discuss how the alliance can readjust to those challenges. How can NATO adapt to the dangerous combination of a revisionist Russia, a reluctant United States, and a Europe in crisis? NATO's relevance and ability to survive have been challenged many times before, and it has not only survived but also has proven highly adaptable to change. This has been good for Western cohesion and for the consolidation of the liberal-democratic, rules-based world order. The main argument of this book is that NATO can overcome this latest set of challenges as well and retain its central role as a cornerstone of the European and transatlantic security order. NATO is different from other alliances because its members share not only interests but values as well, codified in the preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty as allied support for democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. The greatest enemy of the alliance is the forces that challenge the common norms and values of NATO's member states, and – in a larger perspective – the liberal-democratic, rules-based world order, and Western civilisation itself. The book makes an original contribution to the existing literature on NATO and transatlantic relations and discusses the latest developments within NATO since the Trump administration took office.

"NATO's 'neutral' partners and their relations with NATO have always been connected to NATO's wider enlargement and partnership policy. In this chapter I therefore give a short background to that policy, and to the development of NATO's relations with the 'neutrals', before I discuss the future of the relationship. I argue that it is reasonable to believe that NATO post ISAF will be a more introvert, regional, and classic military alliance, and that such a development is probably 'bad' for the 'neutrals'. It could make them reverse their integration process with NATO and, in short, go 'back to the future' in their relations with NATO." (author's abstract)

This article analyzes how defense transformation in Scandinavia has been legitimized and which legitimacy it enjoys. The overall result is that it does not have unambiguous support. There are, however, similarities and differences, both between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members Denmark and Norway and nonaligned Sweden, and between the NATO members. Theoretically, the alliance members should be more willing to transform—even if it implies a "denationalization" of defense. In Denmark, that is, with some reservation, the case but not in Norway. Nonaligned Sweden should, according to the same logic, be resistant to downsizing the armed forces and gearing them for NATO expeditionary war fighting operations. However, that is not the case. A consequence of the negative attitude toward the transformation is less influence, resources, freedom of action, and so on, for the defense forces in general, and an even more lukewarm attitude toward conducting combat operations in a NATO context in particular.