Answer: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is the largest military alliance on the planet. It was established in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet armies after the Second World War. It guarantees the freedom and security of its members through political as well as military means. Born from a desire for collective defence and containment of the USSR, its mandate post Cold War morphed to include nation-building, peace-keeping, military-civil relations and the never-ending fight against terrorism and organised crime, with varying degrees of success. Since then, NATO has been struggling to remain relevant and faces challenges in redefining its role:

• Failures of NATO: The notion of collective security has receded in the background post USSR era. However, it needs to be re-invigorated. For instance, the 2014 bloodless assimilation of Crimea into Russia and recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia have sent shockwaves, especially amongst Russia’s neighbours.
• Shift in focus of collective security from within Europe towards east: The old East-West partitions have become a thing of the past and new fault lines dividing the increasingly worried Baltic States and Poland from a resurgent Russia, have emerged.
• NATO has always been a fractious alliance: The attempts to consider the national wants and needs of all its member states at times seem to be an impossible task. For instance, France left NATO in 1966, only to return, under certain conditions, decades later in 2009.
• Differences within NATO: Turkey, a vital member of the Alliance, has recently involved itself in conflicts on its doorstep in Syria and as far away as Libya. In these civil wars, NATO members have at times found themselves on opposing sides.
• Issue of economic burden sharing: Failure to share the costs of NATO operations more equitably pose risks of unravelling of the alliance as the issue of “burden sharing” has been revived.

Throughout history, military alliances have formed to balance the countervailing power. They have collapsed when the need for a balance disappeared as a result of either power crumbling or changing threat perceptions. However, the collapse of Soviet imperial rule in the late 1980s did not lead to NATO’s demise rather it has evolved, Le.:

• Maintain strategic balance: Post Cold War, NATO identified the need to “preserve the strategic balance in Europe” and adopted it as one of its fundamental security tasks. Under this, it would provide security to democratizing countries, solidifying their transitions from communism and opening new economic prosperity through greater connections with the European Union.
• Reconceived as a “cooperative-security” organization: Under this, NATO has two main objectives, Le., to foster dialogue and cooperation with former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact and to “manage” conflicts in areas on the European periphery, such as the Balkans.
• Pluralistic security community: NATO grew from being a military alliance principally dedicated to protecting its members into institutional expression of the transatlantic community of states and the western values that both defined and united them. Further, the NATO grew into a pluralistic security community where use of force for settling disputes among its members has been ruled out.
• Redefined its missions: Politically, NATO has sought new missions to retain its relevance from peacekeeping to countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to counter-terrorism etc. While on the military side, it has streamlined and created a more flexible command structure capable of deploying military forces rapidly and over greater distances than was the case during the cold war.

Thus, post Cold War, the NATO has not only survived but been transformed into a politico-military entity. NATO of today is a confluence of like-minded democratic ideals and of shared values. The world order has changed and it is in this climate that NATO now has to operate. Unlike the Cold War era, with one clearly defined adversary, today there is a need to fight a patchwork of local conflicts while maintaining an ever-growing alliance between countries.

Answer: United Nations Peacekeeping is a joint effort between its Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Operational Support. Every peacekeeping mission is authorized by the Security Council and forces are contributed by member states on a voluntary basis. Peacekeeping is one of the most effective tools in the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security owing to its unique strengths such as legitimacy, burden sharing, deployment of troops around the world and integrating them with civilian peacekeepers to enforce various multidimensional mandates. However, the physical and political fragility of conflict situations limit the likelihood of success. Peacekeeping faces several challenges that undermine its ability to deliver on its mandates:

• Change in nature of armed conflicts: The nature of conflicts has changed over the years, and peacekeeping, which originally emerged to deal with interstate conflicts, began to be applied to intrastate conflicts including civil wars, organized crime and new generation of weapons.
• Peacekeepers have become targets: Peacekeepers often go where no one else is prepared to go. However, incidents of attack on peacekeepers have become common.
• Elusive political solutions: With the closure of UNOCI and UNMIL, several missions are deployed in the face of weak political agreement, diminished consent and stalled peace processes with vague exit strategies.
• Broad and complex mandates: Peacekeeping missions have been given staggering tasks and wide-ranging responsibilities. At the same time, regional partnerships, though critical, are often unable to deliver the necessary political impact.
• Performance issues: There are challenges related to maintenance of well structured, equipped and trained forces, participation of women in peacekeeping, accountability for perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of misconduct.
• Lack of stronger commitment: All the actors in support of peacekeeping efforts, from political to operational spheres, lack stronger commitment which is needed to achieve peacekeeping excellence.

The accomplishments from past missions have raised the expectations from UN peacekeeping beyond its capacity to deliver. To respond to these challenges, following reforms are needed:

• Institutionalization: Time has come to move from pursuit of activism of individual member states to collective action by the Council. There is a need for greater and effective cooperation between Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs), the Security Council and the Secretariat.
• Incentivization: As of July, 2019, women peacekeepers constituted 6 per cent. There is a need to provide special incentives for women peacekeepers and priority deployment of all women- unit pledges.
• Innovation: Innovation in capacity building of peacekeepers needs to be a priority. This can be done through innovative options such as co-deployment of peacekeepers, enhancing capabilities and capacities through Mobile Training Teams and expansion of online initiatives to develop capacities of future commanders and managers.
• Future proofing: There is further need of better training of peacekeepers and involvement of experts from various fields in peacekeeping in order to better deal with emerging challenges.

Peacekeeping has proven to be one of the most effective tools available to the UN to assist host countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace. In this regard, the Secretary-General has launched Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) to renew mutual political commitment to peacekeeping operations and called on Member States to join in developing a set of mutually-agreed principles and commitments to create peacekeeping operations fit for the future.