In his speech of 20 January 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke of a “rupture”, in order to adapt to the world “as it is”. Is it really a rupture, or a new evolution?
The Atlantic Alliance has been through many crises, and the “burden shifting” at the heart of the current transformation is not a new question: it was raised as soon as the Alliance was created. It is true, however, that this “shift”, as it is presented, would grant Europeans more or less autonomy – which may look, to those concerned, like contradictory injunctions: “do it on your own, but not without us”.
Back in 1975, Raymond Aron was already calling on “my friend the American Secretary of State (Henry Kissinger, author’s note) (who) need only read one thing, namely the books he wrote when he was a professor at Harvard” to ask him, at the time, to adopt a more benevolent attitude towards the Common Market.
Professor Pierre Melandri, for his part, described the late 1990s as the shift, from the American point of view, from the “new Atlanticism” sought by US Secretary of State James Baker to the “lite” alliance of George W. Bush: “as a result, too, more than ever, the Americans seemed determined at all costs to prevent the emergence of a united Europe capable of threatening a unipolarity elevated into a panacea”.
The Alliance is certainly going through major changes. But if there is a “rupture”, it is perhaps above all in the style of some, in a world where blows were exchanged, but in a civilised way.
Nobody, except Putin and his henchmen, really wants the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To adapt to the world “as it is”, and not “as we would like it to be”, it must therefore succeed in its transformation.
So, since NATO must transform itself, do we prefer an imposed transformation (moving, for example, to a “Warsaw Pact” model) or a chosen one (rediscovering the spirit and workings of Euro-Atlantic solidarity)?
The proposal developed here is that it is possible to transform NATO while remaining true to its purpose and to the spirit of its founders, by evolving it to meet the diverse expectations of its members. And to do so by building on some fundamentals of the Atlantic Pact, as it was called in the 1950s, remembering its “raison d’être” and adapting its workings to what it should never have stopped being: a collective dynamic.
Two types of arguments will be presented here in support of this proposal.
Some come from my professional experience of leading transformations in organisations.
And unlike Olivier Schmitt, I believe it is possible to apply some practices of “civilian” organisations to the transformation of the Alliance.
First, because NATO is a politico-military alliance, not just a military one. And also because the military world, despite the very particular nature of its combat missions, has many similarities with civilian organisations.
By way of illustration, in an article in the January issue of DSI magazine, Laure Bardiès recalls, in Marc Bloch’s book on the reasons for the 1940 defeat, “the most pervasive aspects of military bureaucracy”. “Bureaucracy” and its effects are common to all large organisations, military or civilian.
More lightly, Thierry de Montbrial noted, when presenting Hervé Pierre’s book on André Beaufre at IFRI, that “there is plenty of scheming in the armed forces too”… as in many human organisations. And readers involved in the life of such organisations will no doubt have other examples, as I have experienced myself.
The other arguments come from the past and present of the Euro-Atlantic associations brought together in the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA), whose French branch is the Association Française pour la Communauté Euro-Atlantique (AFCEA). An association whose historical foundations draw in particular on the action of Georges Bidault on the political side – who, with Britain’s Bevin, was one of the main architects of the Alliance – of Raymond Aron on the philosophical side, and of General André Beaufre on the military side.
The people Olivier Zajec referred to in the podcast “La Loupe” in December 2025, for whom “the Atlantic Alliance cannot be reduced to NATO; it is a civilisational alliance, a community of destiny. We share values, a culture and a history with the United States”.
Moving beyond discord, or rather overcoming it, by building on Article 2
Article 2 of the Washington Treaty promotes the economic dimension of the Alliance and, more broadly, dialogue between its signatories. It is known as “the Canadian article” because it was introduced at the request of Lester Pearson, then Secretary of State for External Affairs, who believed that political and economic cooperation would remove the causes of war – a conviction also found on the other side of the Atlantic among the advocates of European integration.
Article 4 also refers to the need for consultation between members, but in the event of a direct threat to their territorial integrity, political independence or security.
Set up in May 1956 to give substance to these two articles, the “Committee of Three” produced in December the “Report of the Three Wise Men”, which recognised the need to broaden cooperation and, very concretely, to resort to “prior collective discussion” among the members of the Alliance, beyond military matters alone – just a few days after the end of the Suez crisis.
Yet what was highlighted in the “Report of the Three”, and the only dimension really implemented, was the institutionalisation of scientific and technical cooperation (and even that is a field little known outside the specialists concerned).
Perhaps one evolution of the Alliance would therefore be to finally implement Article 2, to accompany “burden shifting”. This would strengthen and build on what makes the Alliance strong – everything that goes beyond mere mercantile calculations – in the spirit of what Raymond Aron said in 1975 at the General Assembly of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA): “the problem of the Atlantic Alliance (and I would even say the problem of today) is to transform, to transfigure de facto interdependence into moral and political solidarity”.
Actors to overcome today’s tensions: the Euro-Atlantic associations
When an organisation runs into difficulty in a project or in the way it works, the usual reflex is to focus on the opposition and on the people who seem to embody it.
In consultant’s jargon, this is called “the magpie syndrome”: going for whatever shines. Whereas, to overcome blockages, it is more effective to pay more attention to what unites, to spend more time and energy with those who want to move forward together, to benefit from collective intelligence and the resources each brings, to draw in those who hesitate and ultimately lead the most reluctant to follow the common movement, willingly or by momentum.
This dynamic within the Alliance can be pursued with stakeholders subject to fewer constraints than institutions, such as the Euro-Atlantic associations: organisations that have been studied far too little.
From the early 1950s, volunteer associations were created in each member country to promote the aims and achievements of the Atlantic Alliance – often on the initiative of civilian and military figures involved in the creation of NATO.
In 1954, the first of them came together within the ATA, later joined by associations in each member country and in associated countries.
And until the 2000s, the “NATO Handbook” recognised the ATA and each of the national associations as part of its “voluntary organisations”, and later its “parliamentary and non-governmental organisations”, alongside the Eurogroup (1968–1994), the CIOR (Interallied Confederation of Reserve Officers) and even the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Throughout those years – though this is a statement on my part, not academic proof – and thanks to the relationships they maintained with one another, they contributed to dialogue among committed decision-makers. Former and future political leaders, diplomatic and military experts, economic players: all helped, through informal but very real relationships, to maintain a bond and therefore the cohesion of the Alliance, including during periods of tension between member states.
These associations are very diverse in nature.
The ATA is, in Amélie Zima’s words, “a network of national lobbies”, oriented in particular towards public opinion: “it acts both transnationally, with NATO, and nationally, towards member, candidate or partner states”.
Some state their link with the Atlantic Treaty in their name, while others display an “Atlantic” dimension that goes beyond the treaty itself. Others still express in their purpose an “Atlantic Community”, or even a “Euro-Atlantic” one, giving their commitment a very particular depth.
Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State who would create the Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) as the national branch of the ATA, declared at the signing of the treaty that the North Atlantic Treaty was the fruit of three hundred and fifty years of history: “There developed on our Atlantic coast a community, which has spread across the continent, connected with Western Europe by common institutions and moral and ethical beliefs. Similarities of this kind are not superficial, but fundamental”.
On this side of the Atlantic, the Revue Défense Nationale (RDN) republished in 2012 one of its articles from 1953, signed Claude-Edmond Doors (a pseudonym), which also expressed this vocation: “The Atlantic community will only be fully effective if, on the one hand, Europeans have understood the need to rely on the United States until they are strong enough to support themselves, and if the United States, for its part, understands that it needs Europe not only militarily and territorially but even more spiritually, to find there reasons to think and act beyond the horizons of pure technology and economics. There is an urgent problem of psychological action between allies and friends here.”
These associations are little known, as are those who run them. And few books mention them.
Jenny Raflik is one of the few to do so, in her remarkable book on NATO and the Fourth Republic: “A few intellectuals also keep this Atlantic Community alive within various associations, the most important being the AFCA, created in 1954… Lectures are given in this associative setting by high-ranking officers or well-known intellectuals, in order to spread Atlanticist ideas”.
Amélie Zima, who looks at the more recent period, describes them as follows: “the same profile is often found: a multi-positioned individual, a university graduate, with a network that can be made available to the association. The members’ profile is therefore that of an insider, which anchors the elitist character of these associations. The aim is not to have the largest number of members but individuals who, by their qualities, are likely to find access points enabling them to influence or take part in decision-making processes”.
A study of the composition of these associations, in France and in other member countries, and experience of their activities, nevertheless leaves a different impression. They do bring together high-level influencers who no doubt open doors and facilitate synergies. They also include experts who contribute their knowledge to produce content and speak at conferences; but also volunteer members who contribute time, energy and other skills to carry out other kinds of action.
This could be seen, for example, on the panels of the exhibition AFCEA designed for, and with the support of, the Souvenir Français on “France and NATO”, in Paris in January–February 2026, which credited contributors with more varied profiles.
And while Amélie Zima also suggests that “the limit of these organisations lies in their lack of real influence on the decision-making process”, she nonetheless recalls, in another book on the accession of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to the Atlantic Alliance, that these associations were used as levers of influence on public opinion and political life.
They probably have no formal influence on political decisions. But an in-depth study of the past and present activities of these associations would no doubt reveal some educational work, or even influence on the environment of these decisions and on decision-makers themselves, even if this is often very hard to demonstrate factually.
How associations can contribute to the Alliance’s transformation: the role of the “marginal secant”
These Euro-Atlantic associations can serve as a lever of transformation for the organisation and its ecosystem by playing their own role, which goes beyond that of mere subcontractors or complements to NATO’s services.
Their main asset for this is their quality as “marginal secants”: a powerful asset for bringing about successful transformations.
According to Crozier and Friedberg, the marginal secant is “the actor who is a stakeholder in several systems of action that are related to one another and who can therefore play the indispensable role of intermediary and interpreter between different, even contradictory, logics of action”.
Yet an “actor” is not only an intermediary and interpreter, but also someone who acts and can therefore transform their environment.
Members of associations are often marginal secants as individuals.
Like those diplomats, military officers and business leaders, serving or retired, who remain part of their original professional body, even after leaving it, while also taking part in the associative dynamic.
And while the notion of marginal secant applies first to individuals, it can be extended to organisations such as associations.
Because, given the diversity of their members bound by a common objective, they are able to foster synergies between their areas of expertise and the worlds they belong to, within a national association and in the international network that brings them together.
And when it comes to adaptability and resilience in the face of crises, this diversity is a major asset.
On inter-organisational relations between institutions and associations
In the English-speaking world, the action of “associations” is described as the “community and voluntary sector”: also called the “third sector” to distinguish it from the public sector and the for-profit private sector, close to what in France is sometimes called “civil society” – except that an association is also a legal form of organisation.
Mandell and Keast give three criteria to characterise VCOs (voluntary and community organizations):
- People who act voluntarily to achieve shared objectives, following Tocqueville’s “principle of association”;
- Structures that do not seek profit (even if some occasionally divert this characteristic for personal financial gain);
- Structures governed democratically (elected representatives).
As regards relations between the associative world and institutions, this “third sector” has been little studied in the field of international relations. But studies in the social, educational or “community” fields can inspire future research.
They identify two forms of relationship: “vertical”, hierarchical, or “horizontal”, based on partnership.
In some cases, associations are “subcontractors” of public action, which delegates a number of tasks to them – if only in the name of the principle of subsidiarity.
In other cases, the relationship is one of collaboration or even complementarity – notably when public services lack resources and the associative world can bring private funding, or simply the commitment of its volunteers.
Sometimes there are also relationships of competition: real competition, but more often perceived by public organisations that may consider the field to be theirs exclusively, by legitimacy or privilege. Or because the action of these external players makes them feel their habits are being called into question. For, as many examples show, especially in the social and community field, associations can also help change the system by proposing innovations – innovations not always well received, for the many well-known “reasons” of “change management”.
There are very few studies of relations between organisations in the field of international relations. Notable exceptions are the works of Ulrich Franke, who proposes an interesting model for studying interactions between structures, processes and individuals – “structures” in the organisational sense, but also the physical sense. This makes it possible to understand and carry out transformations in all their aspects, from the most intangible to the most physical – which can matter a great deal both for the organisation’s own processes and for the people concerned (think, for example, of transformations that aim to abolish, merge or create entities, with all the consequences that entails).
The transformative capacity of associations, because they are in contact with institutions, is therefore very real.
This is not self-evident when change management is considered only from the angle of processes. Yet the relational dimension is a particularly valuable and effective lever for bringing about and supporting transformations, whether for individuals, groups or organisations.
Supporting and facilitating the Alliance’s transformation (and burden shifting): the possible contributions of Euro-Atlantic associations
At a conference on NATO’s evolution a few years ago, Olivier Zajec expressed a frequent difficulty with these questions: “it sometimes seems to some that it is enough to reason well to be heard”.
Which, obviously, is not enough – for, as I often say: “Once we know… how do we do it?”.
A first possible contribution of this associative world concerns maintaining dialogue between stakeholders, including when governments clash.
Because, as Raymond Aron already wrote in 1963 on this subject of “Atlantic discord”: “it would not be reasonable to assume the worst”. And he added: “when both sides have given up assuming the worst – that the General wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance or that the United States is thinking of abandoning Europe – nothing will yet be settled. At least, a climate of dialogue will have been restored”. Maintaining dialogue, then, through complementary channels.
Holding these conversations also means contributing to the necessary transformation of organisations and relationships, including in difficult situations, by bringing together committed actors around a shared objective, making associations genuine places of conversation – even more so than think tanks which, most of the time, only produce – and that is their purpose – expert opinion.
And conversations transform. Indeed, if in today’s “polarisation” many refuse to talk with those who do not share their views, it is no doubt out of fear of being transformed by the arguments of the other side.
This transformative power of conversations could, for example, be applied to:
- Bringing closer the views on war of two traditions, at a time when we are living through hybrid warfare and a high-intensity war is already raging in Ukraine;
- Helping to overcome financial, even accounting, tensions by also recalling the strength of everything else. If only because the lives the Allies gave in the operations in Afghanistan, in response to the attack of 11 September 2001 on the territory and people of the United States, have no monetary value;
- Also taking into account that people do not commit only for financial reasons. Even the most mercantilist actor can be sensitive to other levers of the MICE model – ego, for example… Dimensions that conversations help to identify so that they can be satisfied in the course of a difficult negotiation.
A second possible contribution of these associations concerns the resilience of our societies and of the Alliance. This resilience is often seen, at NATO as elsewhere, through material, logistical and technological aspects – as the latest report on the subject shows. Yet resilience, as new approaches to industrial safety show, is above all a matter of organisational and human factors.
This resilience born of complementarities is the kind Ukraine demonstrated in the face of the Russian invasion, when autonomous structures, and the population in general, mobilised to complement and support government forces, but also to help them transform themselves to cope, differently.
NATO is working on these synergies between civilian and military organisations, and associations must by nature be involved in this work. If only because of their quality as “marginal secants”, they can contribute to better mutual understanding and therefore to genuine “burden sharing” in our increasingly hybrid world, which combines diplomatic, military and civilian dimensions.
Finally, they may also help take into account more comprehensive approaches to “psychological operations”: a once controversial subject in our country, but one that is perhaps coming back onto the agenda, little by little, notably with “cognitive warfare”. Provided these actions are seen as contributions to dialogue, including with difficult stakeholders and personalities. What could be “the war before the war” – or rather “conversations rather than war”.
Which comes back to the resilience of the whole.
Some conditions for success
Some conditions concern the associations themselves.
The “umbrella” association (the ATA) must also transform itself. While the need for a highly structured “head” to centralise and disseminate information was understandable thirty years ago, the development of the internet and networked communication practices call “vertical” relationships into question, in favour of the added value expected from animating the human network and its synergies.
The Euro-Atlantic associations, for their part, must keep one of their main characteristics: bringing volunteers together.
For by taking on too many permanent staff and developing “salaried associative work”, they risk discouraging volunteers, and therefore losing the assets of “marginal secants” engaged both in the life of organisations and in the associative dynamic.
Sticking to this voluntary commitment will also be a way of resisting the temptation for these associations to become institutionalised and thus lose the features that make them useful – as happened, for example, with the associations of the United States (ACUS) and Slovakia (Globsec), which have become recognised think tanks with a broader scope, but have thereby lost their associative nature and therefore their specific usefulness.
There is also a condition that concerns institutions: accepting associations as marginal secants, and therefore as special partners – not as subcontractors, still less as competitors.
Such partnerships exist in the social field, at the heart of public policy in our Western countries. So why not in the field of security and international relations – the field that, in a way, guarantees the durability of those public policies?
But for that, national institutions and NATO will have to adapt, accept and support, in both their attitudes and their practices, these voluntary actors who are not hierarchically linked to their administrative structures but contribute to the objectives and cohesion of the Alliance.
This may also involve what Olivier Zajec described, at the 2011 conference mentioned above, as a long-term “HR manoeuvre”. Intended, in his presentation, to promote the French point of view within NATO, it could usefully be opened up, beyond the formal organisation, to the ecosystem that includes the Euro-Atlantic associations, with voluntary commitment to their benefit.
Finally, and for everyone, there is what Mandell and Keast describe as the need for “new management skills”: “the need to establish flexible and adaptable structures, non-hierarchical and participatory decision-making, building relationships based on mutual respect, understanding and trust, and capacity building to define an essential mission, build consensus and manage conflict”.
These are skills quite different from the changes that accompany new technologies alone, and far more than “modernisations” of what exists.
For many stakeholders, this will be a real “cultural” transformation, reaching beyond organisations to many fundamentals rooted in individual perceptions, convictions and habits as well as in collective ways of working passed on, consciously and unconsciously, within organisations over the decades.
And because it touches on fundamentals, it will be difficult. Perhaps it is in this sense that we can speak of a “rupture”: not in what unites us, but in the way we lead collectives – and, in NATO’s case, in the service of our common security.
Our world is definitely no longer that of the 1940s, post-Taylorist, with its models of thought, action and organisation.
This is why associative action, with the innovative potential and impertinence of its stakeholders and its capacity for collective mobilisation, can make a significant contribution to the necessary transformations.
Just as, in the civilian world, large organisations adapt to the challenges of their environment and their markets by working closely with their ecosystem, which leads and helps them to transform, rather than by locking themselves into their certainties, habits and rigidities.
Alexis Kummetat
This article reflects only the views of its author. Article originally published in French on LinkedIn on 20 February 2026. Photo credit: NATO.
This article was translated from French by Claude (AI), including quotations from French-language sources. In case of any discrepancy, the French version prevails.
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