New horizons, new challenges. An international conference.
The NATO after the Wales Summit Conference took place on 2 September 2014 in the iconic Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay, Wales.
With the rise of new global players the world's security landscape is changing rapidly, not only presenting the transatlantic community with pressing challenges, but igniting considerable debate over the role and influence of NATO.
A retreat from Afghanistan, compounded with the prospect of an irredentist post-Soviet Russia and the rise of transnational terrorism, sees NATO confronted with an increasingly uncertain world.
On the eve of the NATO Summit, when the eyes of the world were focused on Wales, leading thinkers and decision makers in the international security and defence community from Europe and North America converged on the Welsh capital for an international conference to seek answers to a testing geopolitical landscape.
The NATO after the Wales Summit conference offered an opportunity for re-thinking the objectives and functions of the alliance. This one-day conference considered what these future challenges will be; what new means and mechanisms of cooperation these challenges will require; and how NATO should prepare for future emerging challenges.
Key themes of the conference were:
- Preparing for threats in emergent spaces, including cyber space and maritime security
- Smart Defence and planning for the future in times of austerity
- Cooperation in the transatlantic community in a post-Afghanistan age
- NATO's role as a global security actor
The conference provided a reflexive space to bring together core global leaders from academia, governments and the international security and defence community to rethink how to prepare NATO for an unpredictable future world.
The conference was organised by Cardiff University.
Please refer any enquiries to walessummit@cardiff.ac.uk
