NATO and Article 5 - The Transatlantic Alliance and the Twenty-First-Century Challenges of Collective Defense

For much of the last 25 years, NATO has focused on crisis management in places such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, resulting in major changes to alliance strategy, resourcing, force structure, and training. Re-embracing collective defense -which lies at the heart of the Treaty of Washington''s Article 5 commitment- is no easy feat, and not something NATO can do through rhetoric and official pronouncements. Nonetheless, this shift is vitally necessary if the alliance is to remain the bulwark of Western defense and security. Russia''s illegal annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine have fundamentally upended the security environment in Europe, thrusting NATO into the spotlight as the primary collective defense tool most European states rely upon to ensure their security. Collective defense is one of the alliance''s three core missions, along with crisis management and cooperative security. It is defined in Article 5, the most well-known and arguably most important part of NATO''s fo