Proponents of NATO reform argue that the alliance, while historically valuable, has become strategically incoherent, institutionally bloated, and dangerously misaligned with the actual security interests of its member states. They hold that meaningful structural, financial, and doctrinal changes are necessary for NATO to remain a credible deterrent rather than a diplomatic habit. This viewpoint spans a range of thinkers from realist foreign policy scholars to defense hawks frustrated by free-riding, and includes both those who want a leaner, more effective alliance and those who believe the alliance's current form actively courts unnecessary conflict.

Reform advocates argue that NATO's funding and force-contribution model has allowed most member states to systematically underinvest in their own defense while sheltering under American guarantees. The 2% of GDP defense spending target, formally adopted at the 2014 Wales Summit in the aftermath of Russia's annexation of Crimea, remains unmet by a majority of members. Reformers contend this is not an incidental shortfall but a predictable consequence of the alliance's structure: when the United States underwrites collective security unconditionally, smaller members have every incentive to redirect defense spending toward domestic priorities. They argue the remedy is not diplomatic pressure but enforceable contribution requirements with real consequences for noncompliance, including graduated reductions in American security guarantees. ¹⁾

A substantial school within the reform viewpoint holds that NATO's post-Cold War expansion eastward - from 16 members in 1991 to 32 by 2024 - has stretched the alliance's credible defense perimeter beyond what members are actually willing to defend. They argue that the admission of states along Russia's border, particularly the Baltic states and more recently aspirants like Ukraine and Georgia, extended Article 5 guarantees to regions where enforcement would require a level of military commitment that neither the United States nor Western European states have demonstrated willingness to provide. From this perspective, enlargement without commensurate military investment is not reassurance but a form of strategic bluffing that raises rather than lowers the risk of miscalculation. ²⁾

Reformers point to NATO's post-Cold War missions - the Balkans interventions, the Afghanistan campaign, counter-piracy and counter-terrorism operations - as evidence that the alliance has drifted from its foundational purpose of collective territorial defense in Europe into an instrument of expeditionary warfare with no clear limiting principle. They argue that this mission creep has diluted the alliance's focus, consumed resources, and generated political liabilities without producing durable security outcomes. Afghanistan in particular is cited as a cautionary example: a 20-year NATO engagement that ended with the Taliban in control and no lasting institutional transformation. Reform advocates argue the alliance must return to a narrower, geographically grounded defense mandate. ³⁾

Many reform proponents argue that European states must develop genuine independent defense capacity rather than treating it as an alternative to NATO membership. They hold that the European Union's hesitant steps toward a common defense framework - through mechanisms like PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) and the European Defence Fund - are necessary supplements to NATO, not threats to it. A Europe capable of projecting meaningful military force independently would, in this view, strengthen the alliance by reducing American overextension and giving European capitals genuine strategic agency. Critics of this position within the reform camp worry that parallel EU structures duplicate costs and complicate command integration; proponents respond that the status quo of near-total dependence on American commitment is strategically untenable over any long horizon. ⁴⁾

Reformers also engage seriously with NATO's nuclear posture. The alliance's current extended deterrence arrangements - in which American tactical nuclear weapons are forward-deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey under dual-key arrangements - are regarded by some reform advocates as artifacts of Cold War logic that require modernization. They argue that the arrangements create ambiguity about command authority, generate domestic political complications in host states, and may not constitute credible deterrence against a Russia that has expanded its own tactical nuclear arsenal. Some reformers favor consolidated deterrence with clearer American command; others argue for building indigenous European nuclear capability, a position that has gained renewed attention in Germany and Poland following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. ⁵⁾

The reform viewpoint in its modern form emerged in the 1990s, when the disappearance of the Soviet threat prompted serious debate about whether NATO had outlived its founding rationale. Scholars including Kenneth Waltz argued at the time that NATO's persistence after the Cold War was institutionally inertial rather than strategically reasoned, and predicted that expansion would generate precisely the Russian hostility it claimed to prevent. ⁶⁾

The 2003 Iraq War deepened reform sentiment by exposing sharp divisions within the alliance - France and Germany refused to participate, while the United States assembled a separate “coalition of the willing” - and demonstrated that NATO solidarity did not extend to military operations that major European members considered illegitimate. The episode reinforced arguments that the alliance needed clearer decision-making rules and more defined operational scope.

Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine reanimated NATO's collective defense mandate and temporarily quieted voices calling for retrenchment. Germany announced a historic €100 billion defense investment. Sweden and Finland, long neutral, joined the alliance. However, reform advocates argued that these developments, while welcome, illustrated rather than refuted their case: decades of underinvestment had left European states militarily hollow, and the Ukraine war exposed the gap between alliance commitments and actual war-fighting capacity. The debate shifted rather than ended, with reform energy moving from questions of whether NATO should exist toward urgent questions of how it should be reconstituted for sustained high-intensity conflict. ⁷⁾

Barry Posen - Director of the Security Studies Program at MIT and author of Restraint. Posen argues for a fundamental reorientation of American grand strategy away from “liberal hegemony” toward offshore balancing, with NATO restructured to place primary defense responsibility on European states. He is among the most rigorous academic voices for alliance reform from a realist perspective.

John Mearsheimer - Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer has argued that NATO expansion was the proximate cause of Russian aggression in Ukraine and that reforming the alliance requires abandoning aspirations for further eastward enlargement. His position is sharply contested but widely engaged.

Douglas Macgregor - Retired U.S. Army Colonel and defense analyst. Macgregor represents a more operationally focused reform tradition, arguing that NATO's command structures and force configurations are optimized for Cold War scenarios rather than contemporary warfare. He has called for radical restructuring of U.S. force commitments in Europe.

Elbridge Colby - Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and author of The Strategy of Denial. Colby argues that the United States must rebalance its alliance commitments away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific, which in his view requires European NATO members to assume a far greater share of their own conventional defense.

Emmanuel Macron - President of France. Macron has been the most prominent head of government to advocate for European strategic autonomy, famously describing NATO as experiencing “brain death” in 2019 and calling for a European defense capacity that does not depend on American political will. His position represents the reform viewpoint from within the alliance's political leadership. ⁸⁾

The reform viewpoint contains genuine tension between those who want a stronger, more disciplined NATO and those who believe American retrenchment from European security is itself desirable.

Primacists vs. restrainers: Defense hawks like Colby support robust alliance commitments but insist Europeans must fund them adequately; restrainers like Posen argue the United States should reduce its exposure in Europe regardless of European burden-sharing, on the grounds that Europe is capable of defending itself and American overcommitment distorts both alliance behavior and U.S. resource allocation.

Enlargement skeptics vs. defenders: Some reformers hold that NATO's open-door policy was a strategic error whose costs are now being paid in Ukraine; others within the reform camp accept enlargement as fait accompli and focus on making existing commitments credible rather than relitigating past decisions.

European autonomy: There is significant disagreement about whether the EU defense initiatives are complements or competitors to NATO. France has historically pushed for a more independent European defense identity; Central and Eastern European states, particularly Poland and the Baltic states, are skeptical of arrangements that might reduce American engagement.

Nuclear posture: Whether European states - particularly Germany or Poland - should develop or host independent nuclear deterrents is a live question among reform advocates, with no settled consensus.

• NATO
• NATO History
• NATO Debate
• NATO Dissolution Viewpoint
• NATO Expansion Viewpoint
• NATO Expansion Restraint Viewpoint
• European Strategic Autonomy
• U.S. Grand Strategy - Restraint Viewpoint
• Burden-Sharing Debate

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