L’Alleanza Atlantica e la lotta al terrorismo internazionale: breve storia di un rapporto difficile

The fight against international terrorism is one of the great challenges that the Atlantic Alliance and NATO are currently facing. Starting soon after 9/11, the Alliance has gradually developed its own doctrinary corpus, based on the three pillars of awareness, capabilities and engagement. This corpus is embodied in a series of documents ranging from the Military Concept for the Defence against Terrorism (MC-472, 2002), to the Strategic Concept (“Active Engagement, Modern Defence”) adopted in Lisbon in 2010, to the NATO’s Policy Guidelines on Counter-Terrorism, adopted in Chicago in 2012. However, strong reserves still exist about NATO’s ability to develop an effective counter-terrorism action. Its historical heritage and “reactive” character, as well as its nature of military organization, are normally quoted as the main obstacles in this sense. Presently, the Alliance seems thus trapped somewhere in between the two roles, while the possibility of an evolution remains uncertain. Traditionally, operational needs have been the main driver of NATO’s change. Today, instead, this element conjures with the financial constraints affecting NATO member States to promote a different kind of change, focused more on the Alliance’s military dimension than on its potential role of security broker.