Event Highlights: NATO’s European Allies and the Burden Sharing within the Alliance
On Friday, October 19, the Center for the Study of Europe hosted a luncheon discussion and afternoon seminar on “NATO’s European Allies” with Norwegian political scientist Janne Haaland Matlary and her colleague Magnus Petersson. Matlary, who served as Norway’s State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1997 to 2000, is Professor of International Politics at the University of Oslo. She has published widely in the field of European security policy, and is currently working on the political implications of asymmetric warfare in NATO. Petersson is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies and former Research Fellow, Director of Studies, and Head of Research and Development at the Swedish National Defence College. He has published several books and articles on Scandinavian security issues.
Matlary and Petersson’s talks centered around the subject of their co-edited books NATO: The Power of Partnerships, in which they look at NATO’s different kinds of partnerships systematically, both from NATO’s perspective and that of partners, and NATO’s European Allies: Military Capability and Political Will, in which they take up the question of “burden sharing.” They focused in particular on the role of Europe, given its current situation of economic austerity and postmodern political values, in regional and global security and defence.