NATO’s Road to Madrid

In our final episode, NATO’s Road to Madrid comes full circle as Max sits down with original host Rachel Ellehuus, who is now helping steer U.S. NATO policy as the Secretary of Defense representative in Europe and the defense advisor for the U.S. Mission to NATO. After our prior two episodes reacted to the Madrid Summit outcomes, Max and Rachel take this opportunity to look ahead to the future of the alliance. How will NATO implement the level of ambition in the Strategic Concept? What does the accession of Sweden and Finland mean for the alliance's "open door" policy? What does it mean to be a global alliance? Max and Rachel answer all these questions and more.

In our second episode after NATO's historic summit, Max sits down with one of the key figures at Madrid, UK Permanent Representative to NATO David Quarrey. Ambassador Quarrey walks us through what it's like to participate in a NATO summit and breaks down the alliance's key decisions on Ukraine, Finland and Sweden, reinforcing the eastern flank, and the Strategic Concept.

After NATO’s summit at the end of June, the road to Madrid has reached its destination. To begin our analysis of the summit outcomes, Max sits down with Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, the Director-General of the European Union Military Staff. Vice Admiral Bléjean gives his view on the Madrid Summit and breaks down how NATO and the EU cooperate on everything from China to supporting Ukraine to procuring new military capabilities.

In this episode, Pierre and Luis conduct two separate interviews with leading experts on Africa and Latin America. They discuss the key security dynamics in those regions, the differing strategic approaches taken by Russia and China there, and what role NATO and its members might play. In the first segment, Pierre interviews Elie Tenenbaum, director of the Security Studies Center at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) and a top European expert on African security affairs. In the second, Luis discusses Latin America with Dr. Robert Evan Ellis, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College and a senior, non-resident associate at CSIS. This interview includes a short Spanish-language segment.

Max Bergmann, the new director of the CSIS Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program, is joined by one of the leading voices on the Hill focused on NATO and European security: Congressman Gerry Connolly. The congressman gives a congressional viewpoint on a range of topics, but especially the importance of democratic values and political cohesion for the future of the alliance. The congressman also explained his role as President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and his expectations for the forthcoming Madrid Summit.

In this episode of NATO's Road to Madrid, Pierre and Luis sit down with the brilliant Professor Michito Tsuruoka of the Keio University in Tokyo, one of the foremost experts on NATO in Asia. The three talk about everything from Japan’s critical role in the international response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine to the viability of an “Asian NATO”. Along the way, they discuss how China views the conflict in Ukraine, how NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners view the role of the alliance in their region, and the importance of European engagement in Asia.

In this episode of NATO's Road to Madrid, Sean and Pierre are joined by Lieutenant General David Julazadeh, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Capability Development at NATO's Allied Command Transformation. Lt. Gen. Julazadeh talks with Sean and Pierre about the alliance's "Digital Transformation", the process for integrating new technologies into all NATO's capabilities, plans, and operations. He also touches on how the war in Ukraine is informing this process and what may happen at the NATO Summit in Madrid.

NATO's Road to Madrid is back, at a critical time for the alliance. In this episode, hosts Pierre Morcos and Luis Simón are joined by two highly respected experts: Lauren Speranza, Director of the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and Dan Hamilton, a Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. Together, the group breaks down NATO's response to Russia's illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine, the alliance's potential vulnerabilities, and the effects of the invasion on NATO's development of its new Strategic Concept.

In episode four of NATO's Road to Madrid, Rachel is joined by two leading voices on space security issues from two sides of the Atlantic: Kaitlyn Johnson, Deputy Director and Fellow of the CSIS Aerospace Security Project, and Andrea Rotter, Head of Division for Foreign and Security Policy at the Hanns Seidel Foundation, a think tank in Munich. Rachel, Kaitlyn, and Andrea explain why space is so important to our daily lives and militaries, as well as how NATO's space-based capabilities could be threatened—both by adversary capabilities and by a lack of clear international norms for military conduct. They conclude by discussing how NATO might (and should) respond at the Summit in Madrid and in the new Strategic Concept.

In the third episode of NATO’s Road to Madrid, Rachel is joined by Admiral Rob Bauer, Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, and the senior-most military officer at NATO. In his role as Chair, Admiral Bauer serves as the primary military advisor to the NATO Secretary General and the North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s top decision-making body. Admiral Bauer explains the role of the Military Committee and the relationship between civilian and military leadership in NATO before shedding some light on the episode’s theme: the future of NATO’s other two core tasks, crisis management and cooperative security, in an era where the focus is back on collective defenses.