In November 2010, NATO will hold a summit in Lisbon, Portugal, where leaders will endorse a new Strategic Concept designed to provide guidance for the alliance in an increasingly unpredictable and globalizing world. Since the alliance last updated its Strategic Concept in 1999, NATO membership has expanded to include nine new member states and has become more operational than ever with Kosovo, Operation Active Endeavor, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as some of its most complicated, sustained, and highest-risk missions. Moreover, NATO invoked for the first time in its history the Article V mutual defense guarantee after September 11, 2001.
The alliance must reconcile different views and instincts across a set of big issues if it wants to remain modern and relevant in the 21st century. These range from how to carry out Article V guarantees and reassure new members to reengaging Russia. While the alliance has stepped up to the plate and deployed some 10,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, the ISAF mission remains controversial, as the recent collapse of the Dutch government shows. Today, NATO is busier than ever yet somehow seems less present in our political discourse and in the public's eye. It is engaging in more missions with more and more countries around the world, but defense budgets are declining and capabilities often lacking, creating new burden-sharing problems and debates. In today's unpredictable and globalizing world, can a bigger and expanded NATO react nimbly to new crises and strategic dynamics inside and outside Europe that affect the interest and security of its members?
Bio
Madeleine K. Albright
Madeleine Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99-0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997.
Albright now serves as a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. In addition to her PhD from Columbia University, she also holds Honorary Doctors of Laws from the University of Washington in 2002, Smith College in 2003, University of Winnipeg in 2005, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and Knox College in 2008. Secretary Albright also serves as a Director on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations
Peter MacKay
Peter MacKay is Canada's national defense minister. He is also a member of parliament for Central Nova, Nova Scotia, a seat he has held since 1997. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee and serves on the Treasury Board and Planning and Priorities Cabinet Committees. Before becoming defense minister in 2007, Minister MacKay was the country's minister of foreign affairs. He also played a leading role in the creation of the Conservative Party, which merged the Progressive Conservative Party and Canadian Alliance Party. Prior to pursuing politics, Minister MacKay worked as a lawyer, serving as the crown attorney for the Central Region of Nova Scotia, appearing regularly in provincial, family, and Supreme Court.
Jonathan Marcus
Jonathan Marcus is diplomatic correspondent for the BBC. He previously was the defense correspondent and U.S. affairs analyst of the BBC World Service based in London. During the Kosovo campaign he reported extensively from Brussels, as well as from Kosovo itself in the war’s aftermath.
Nikolay Mladenov
Nickolay Evtimov Mladenov was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria by the 41st National Assembly on January 27th 2010. Between July 2009 and January 2010 he was Minister of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria.
Between 2007 and 2009, he was a Member of the European Parliament. He served on the Foreign Affairs Committee -- Security and Defence Subcommittee, and on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. He was also Chair of the Delegation for relations with Iraq and served on the delegations for Israel and Afghanistan.
Since 2005 he has consulted the World Bank, NDI, IRI and other international organizations in South Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Morocco.
Between 2001 and 2005 Mr. Mladenov was a Member of the Bulgarian Parliament where he served as Vice-Chairman of the European Integration Committee and sat on the Foreign and Defence Policy Committee. During that period he was representative to the Constitutional Convention on the Future of Europe.
Previously he worked for the World Bank and the Open Society Institute for Bulgaria and South East Europe. He was election observer in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Pakistan. In 2008 he headed the EU election observation mission to Ghana.
Mr. Mladenov has a MA degree in War Studies from King’s College, London, BA and MA - International Relations, from the University for National and World Economy, Sofia.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been active in politics most of life, beginning in 1978 when he won a seat in the Danish Parliament (Folketing). He became minister for taxation in 1987, and three years later, minister of economy and taxation, a position he held for two years. In 2001, he became Denmark’s prime minister and during the last half of 2002, he held the rotating presidency of the EU. Mr. Rasmussen became the 12th secretary general of NATO on August 1, 2009. During his political tenure, he has held many positions within his political party (Liberal Party), including being its spokesman and chairman of the national organization. He is also an author with several books on taxation and government structure to his name. Mr. Rasmussen has a master’s degree in economy from the University of Aarhus.
Process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standardized around the world. Factors that have contributed to globalization include increasingly sophisticated communications and transportation technologies and services, mass migration and the movement of peoples, a level of economic activity that has outgrown national markets through industrial combinations and commercial groupings that cross national frontiers, and international agreements that reduce the cost of doing business in foreign countries. Globalization offers huge potential profits to companies and nations but has been complicated by widely differing expectations, standards of living, cultures and values, and legal systems as well as unexpected global cause-and-effect linkages. See alsofree trade.
International military alliance created to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion. A 1948 collective-defense alliance between Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg was recognized as inadequate to deter Soviet aggression, and in 1949 the U.S. and Canada agreed to join their European allies in an enlarged alliance. A centralized administrative structure was set up, and three major commands were established, focused on Europe, the Atlantic, and the English Channel (disbanded in 1994). The admission of West Germany in 1955 led to the Soviet Union's creation of the opposing Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact. France withdrew from military participation in 1966. Since NATO ground forces were smaller than those of the Warsaw Pact, the balance of power was maintained by superior weaponry, including intermediate-range nuclear weapons. After the Warsaw Pact's dissolution and the end of the Cold War in 1991, NATO withdrew its nuclear weapons and attempted to transform its mission. It involved itself in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stated that an attack on one signatory would be regarded as an attack on the rest. This article was first invoked in 2001 in response to the terrorist September 11 attacks against the U.S. Additional countries joined NATO in 1999, 2004, and 2009 to bring the number of full members to 28. In 2009 France announced its plan to rejoin NATO's integrated military command.
The NATO Secretary-General stated Nato forces other than the U.S. comprise 40% of the forces in Afghanistan. But as of 16 Apr., it is closer to 35%, and with the "surge" in U.S. troops, that percentage will drop even lower.
("Troop Numbers & Contributions | ISAF - International Security Assistance Force". Isaf.nato.int. http://www.isaf.nato.int/en/troop-co...ions/index.php. Retrieved 2010-06-23.)
I am impress by the ideas put forward by the Bulgarian foreign minister Mladenov. Smart spending and efficient defense industry is exactly what we do not have in the EU .
member. 
