Aligning NATO’s partnerships with contemporary world politics

The NATO allies often refer to the maintenance of the rules-based international order as their common foreign policy purpose. However, these same allies face great-power contenders and illiberal countries that hollow out this notion in practice. NATO has to adapt its partnership policies to these new realities. Western competition with Russia, China, and Iran compels closer cooperation with partners that are aligned with NATO. The adaptation to illiberal countries means acknowledging NATO’s limited transformative impact and focusing instead on partners’ utility in the era of great-power competition.