Members Event
Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director General, Royal United Services Institute
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Head of the US and the Americas Programme, and Dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House
Chair: Hans Kundnani, Senior Research Fellow, Europe Programme, Chatham House
Further speakers to be announced.
On 4 April 2019, NATO will celebrate its 70th anniversary against a backdrop of unprecedented uncertainty about its future. US President Donald Trump has called the alliance ‘obsolete’ and has questioned America’s security guarantee to its European allies. This comes at a time when Russia has become increasingly antagonistic towards the West and the United Kingdom is preparing to leave the EU, therefore raising questions about the future of strategic alignment between NATO members.
The panellists will assess the future of the Atlantic alliance with a particular focus on Britain’s relationship with NATO in a post-Brexit context. To what extent, if any, will Brexit reshape the power dynamics between NATO member states? With 80 per cent of the alliance’s defence spending expected to come from non-EU members, is the EU at risk of getting sidelined in meaningful strategic conversations moving forward? And how should Britain – which played a leading role in creating NATO in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War – respond to uncertainty about NATO’s future?