NATO's Post-Cold War Relevance in Counter Terrorism

Abstract

From the end of the Cold War, through the process of globalization, national security has transitioned from an idea of purely state versus state interaction into a concept including both state and non-state actors. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), once the counter balance to the Soviet Union, has evolved into an alliance that has expanded its attention to include non-state actors, such as international terrorist organizations. Scholars have theorized on the lifespan of NATO post-Cold War, however the majority of these theories have focused on state versus state issues, a common paradigm of the 20th century, and not included state versus non-state issues, such as international terrorism. As NATO continues to be a post-Cold War, state alliance has it been able to transition to a relevant counter terrorism force and reduce the number of terrorist attacks within each member state, the alliance as a whole, and/or in the international community? With statistical data of terrorist attacks within NATO member states from the Global Terrorism Database this study focuses on each new member that joined during three influential time periods before and after the end of the Cold War in order to determine if becoming a member correlates to an increase or decrease in the number of terrorist attacks. Complementing the statistical data is a content analysis of NATO Summit Declarations in order to determine the combined strategies of each member state in reference to international terrorism. According to the findings of the statistical data, I hypothesize that each state will have experienced a decrease in terrorist attacks within their borders after becoming a member of NATO. The content analysis will illustrate that the alliance has continued to evolve its existence by increasing attention and resources to the fight against international terrorism.