The NATO Alliance was formed in 1949 as a response to the post-war realignment of the political and military situation in Europe and beyond after the end of the Second World War. Over the first four decades of its existence the priority was to defend the West against a possible attack from the Warsaw Pact (WP) countries. However, the break-up of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact removed this threat and NATO recognised a need to adopt a new strategic direction and raison-d’être.

In 1990, NATO Heads of State agreed on a need to transform the alliance and its Strategic Concept to reflect the changing political and military situation. The relative certainties of the NATO/Warsaw Pact stand-off were replaced by a more unpredictable landscape in which economic difficulties, ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes in the former eastern bloc countries seemed likely to destabilise Europe’s eastern borders.

Less than ten years after the 1991 changes, NATO Heads of State agreed another new Strategic Concept for the Alliance at the Washington summit in 1999. It recognised the dramatic changes which had taken place in European and Baltic States, and reaffirmed the defensive nature of the Alliance. In July 2007 NATO’s Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, called for the Strategic Concept to be updated once again in light of the NATO’s out-of area operations, particularly in Afghanistan, and the changing nature of NATO’s priorities.