Understanding NATO: Transformation, New Identities and Adaptation Process of NATO

This study deals with transformation of NATO and discusses the reasons of transformation and future of the alliance. As an outcome of the Cold War, NATO was founded for both challenging the threats such as Soviet/communism/red/east and providing security and stability for the defined territory that stated in the article 5 of the Washington Treaty. NATO is also not an ordinary collective defense/security or military alliance that can be analyzed through classical security approach or Positivist alliance theory. NATO has been enlarging, deepening, reforming its own institutional structure via “internal adaptation process”, emphasizing security identity and new identities and developing new programs such as Membership Action Plan that similar to EU’s acquis communautaire after the Cold War. Accordingly, NATO has been carrying out its “external adaptation process” through The Partnership for Peace (PfP), NATO-UN relations, NATO-Russia relations, and Mediterranean Dialogue. NATO by adopting Strategic Concepts has been mainly addressing democracy, human rights and economic cooperation. It is remarkable that even though NATO is a collective security/defense alliance, NATO has been referring common values such as freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law to define the bases of the alliance in the strategic concepts. Despite the fact that raison d’etre died out, NATO as an example of international socialization process, -although it is considered as an anomaly according to positivist approaches- still subsists and develops new legitimacy foundations not only in the area of international peace and security also in the area of free market and liberal democracy .