Nuclear issue and missile defense in NATO’s new strategic concept

At the Lisbon Summit meeting of 19 and 20 November 2010, NATO leaders adopted their new strategic concept that will guide the alliance's political and military development for the next ten years. During the preparations and negotiations for the new concept, three issues caused long-lasting differences and demanded quite some effort in order to find a compromise: 1) the nuclear issue and whether or not NATO should commit in its strategic concept to the « global zero » objective, 2) the request of five European countries to remove the American non-strategic nuclear weapons that are still located in Europe and 3) the anti-missile system. The following paper presents these issues, their implications and the orientations defined in NATO’s new strategic concept.