The NATO Washington Summit: Look Carefully for the Southern Strategy

The agenda of NATO’s Washington summit was unsurprisingly driven by the war in Ukraine and continued efforts to bolster deterrence and defense on the alliance’s eastern flank. The summit’s closing declaration reflects these priorities. At first glance, security on the southern flank does not feature prominently, but a closer look reveals considerable attention to challenges there, even if they lack a “southern” label.

Counterterrorism features prominently in the summit’s conclusions, second only to confronting an aggressive Russia. This was not a foregone conclusion before the meeting. Member states face different risks and have different approaches to counterterrorism, but consensus in the alliance was strong enough to highlight the importance of that mission. Türkiye, the United States, and southern European NATO members surely led the way on this front. Terrorism affects the alliance as a whole, but potential spillovers from crises across the Mediterranean, not least from the Gaza conflict, are at the core of current concerns. 

Missile defense is another concern with special relevance to the South. The summit communiqué notes the prominence of NATO missile defense assets already deployed in and around the Mediterranean. The potential for further escalation involving Hizbollah or Iran reinforces the importance of the task looking south as well as east.

The summit conclusions also identify the security of undersea infrastructure as an area for greater attention, including the establishment of a center dedicated to this effort. The Baltic Sea and the North Sea are obvious focal points for this concern. But the Mediterranean is the location of much undersea infrastructure, from digital communications to electrical interconnectors and pipelines. Greater attention to this issue will have direct application in the South.

Finally, the summit declaration does explicitly mention security in the southern neighborhood, with an emphasis on partnerships in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and the role of NATO’s hub for the South in Naples. The decision to appoint a special representative for the southern neighborhood can help to elevate dialogue and cooperation with partners there. These partnerships, however, are not easy to manage, as was evident when southern partners declined to participate in summit events at a ministerial level. The new special representative may or may not help with the larger question of articulating NATO’s security priorities looking south, but they will remain important, if largely implicit, in alliance strategy.