NATO’s Future
February 13, 2024 – 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City, Auditorium 201 -320 E. 9th Street, Charlotte, NC 28202
Steve Sabol, Ph.D., Professor, Department of History, UNC Charlotte
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024. A remarkable achievement considering that its raison d’êtra was to contain Soviet expansion in Europe and provide a mutual framework for defense. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, however, did not result in NATO’s demise, but just the opposite. NATO continues to expand, most recently Finland and Sweden requested membership following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. One of the goals posited by Sarwar Kashmiri, the briefing book essay’s author, is to trigger “a national discussion that generates ideas to strengthen and maintain NATO’s future role in transatlantic security.” Sabol’s presentation is designed to provide historical background about NATO from 1992 to today in order to generate discussion about NATO’s continuing role for Europe’s defense, its past and current mission, and possible steps to maintain a viable future the most successful peacetime alliance in modern history.