NATO’s Nuclear Future: New Security Challenges and the Role of Deterrence IAN ANTHONY P rior to the 2010 meeting of Alliance Foreign Ministers in Tallinn, nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the Alli­ance continues to need a credible nuclear deterrent for»as long as there are rogue regimes or terrorist groupings that may pose a nuclear threat to us«. But while nato representatives emphasize that nuclear deter­rence remains necessary, there is also a mood within the Alliance to evaluate in greater detail the role nuclear weapons can and should play. In contrast to the relatively straightforward approach dictated by the circumstances of the Cold War, nato will now have to forge a common view on how deterrence works, against a much more uncertain back­drop. In 2009, the Secretary-General established a Group of Experts to lay the groundwork for a new nato Strategic Concept to update the 1999 Strategic Concept, nato ’s core mission statement at present. There ap­pears to be an emerging pattern of reviewing the Strategic Concept of nato roughly every ten years, so the task facing the experts is to establish guiding principles for Alliance nuclear policy over the next decade, rather than looking far into the future. Aspects of the 1999 document – which was largely developed by 16 countries, as opposed to the 28 members of the enlarged nato in 2010 – now have a very conservative feel. For example, the document asserts that nato will need nuclear weapons in perpetuity as a symbol of the us commitment to Europe. This is at odds with the fact that many Allies already regard trans-Atlantic solidarity as both normal and perma­nent. Whether nuclear weapons can really provide the necessary symbol­ism in those countries that have a less relaxed view is an open question. These are often the same countries whose participation in key aspects of nuclear policy is excluded under commitments given to Russia by the Alliance at the time of its most significant enlargement. Given that roughly 20 percent of nato members have now expressed their view that nuclear policy needs to be revised, a simple»cut and ipg 3/2010 Anthony, NATO’s Nuclear Future 145