NATO Watch is a new, independent project to collect and disseminate information and research on NATO and Euro-Atlantic security issues. It will be the only independent non-governmental organisation with a remit to monitor and analyse NATO on a daily basis.

NATO Watch is intended to be both pragmatic (critical but constructive) and add value to existing civil society activities. It will:

· Provide independent monitoring, information and analysis of policy-making and operational activities within NATO;

· Increase transparency, stimulate parliamentary engagement and broaden public awareness and participation in NATO policy-making; and

· Establish a NATO policy network (with at least one ‘NATO Watcher’ in each NATO member state) and an annual ‘shadow’ NATO summit.

This website will provide comprehensive, accurate, reliable and up-to-date information about NATO. Research Reports and Briefing Papers will explore NATO reform. A monthly e-newsletter, The NATO Observatory, will provide a digest of NATO news stories and shared analysis and reports from expert partners and external sources.

With fresh US leadership, NATO could be at the heart of a new “moral, muscular multilateralism”, a cooperative approach to world problems that uses international organizations and law to the full. NATO Watch will develop ideas to support this goal, including a new Strategic Concept and innovative solutions to some of NATO’s most pressing security challenges (Russia, Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, etc.)

Conference Agenda

The Shadow NATO Summit

Options for NATO:

Pressing the Re-Set Button on the Strategic Concept

A Two-Day Civil Society Shadow Conference to Coincide with NATO’s 60^th Anniversary Summit

Organised by

BASIC – Bertelsmann Stiftung – ISIS Europe – NATO Watch

With the support of:

The Marmot Charitable Trust, UK

31 March – 1 April 2009

Evening Keynote speech by Jamie Shea
Tuesday 31 March at 19H (RSVP required)

For the agenda and more information on the event, please click here
For registration, please click here

More information, speeches, summary and the Citizen’s declaration will be available here soon.

NATO has almost completely lost its way, unable to work out whether it should be reliving the Cold War -- focusing on containing or deterring a potentially resurgent beast- from- the- east (and thereby inevitably encouraging, human nature being what it is, just that kind of behaviour), or rather transforming itself into a cooperative, common-security organization that could, conceptually, embrace even Russia itself as a member, and play a useful role in applying, with Security Council support, the kind of sophisticated enforcement capacity that not just the trans-Atlantic powers but the world as a whole needs.

Extract from Keynote Address by Gareth Evans, President & CEO, International Crisis Group and Co-Chair, International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, to International Dialogue for Funders on Advancing Peace and Security in 2009 and Beyond, Madrid, 20 November 2008

Objectives:

• To bring together senior NATO officials, civil society and policy experts on comprehensive security at a ‘shadow summit’[1] to identify, discuss and share ideas concerning the future of NATO, including a new Strategic Concept and innovative solutions to some of the Alliance’s most pressing security challenges.
• To launch a ‘Citizens Declaration on Alliance Security’—a concise statement of NATO’s purpose, possibly serving as a precursor to a new Strategic Concept— an alternative to the official version that is expected to be unveiled by Heads of State at the Summit;
• To explore ways in which civil society groups and parliamentarians within the Alliance could work together more effectively to advance NATO-related policies and actions that are in keeping with the shared democratic and humanitarian values of member states; and
• To initiate a permanent NATO-wide civil society policy network (linked to NATO Watch) and to discuss the scope and nature of such a network.

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