Benjamin Day and Roderick Parkes
At the recent summit in The Hague, NATO reaffirmed its commitment to a “new war of production.” With fresh funding, heightened urgency, and rising expectations, the Alliance is cultivating a mindset that is focused, specialized, and execution-driven. But war rarely conforms to that kind of conveyor-belt thinking.
Take something as seemingly straightforward as securing artillery supply. Shells are seen as NATO’s most predictable wartime need. Yet the next war may not resemble Ukraine’s grinding attrition — and if it does, it could upend NATO’s core approach to warfare. Even here, therefore, the Alliance must decide what to produce, what to stockpile, and what to forgo, without knowing which bets will pay off.
While many writers have applauded NATO’s new posture, praising its discipline and urgency as hallmarks of a wartime mentality, what they’re really praising is the kind of clarity and energy we wish existed in peacetime, when priorities can be set, plans followed, and outcomes measured. War is not so cooperative.
A true wartime mindset is in many ways the opposite. Conflict demands thinking that is often undirected, contradictory, and redundant. Since no plan survives first contact with the enemy, supple thinking becomes the reserve that absorbs crisis and enables paradoxical action.
The coming weeks will be critical in determining whether NATO can cultivate the cognitive flexibility it needs. Organizational reforms are underway that promise to give individual divisions in HQ more autonomy in policy planning, shifting responsibility away from the secretary-general’s private office. Responsibility for external engagement — long a source of innovation within the Alliance — is being relocated to the divisions best positioned to integrate it into daily work. These are promising developments.
But they may be incidental to a larger institutional momentum: a drive toward efficiency and a cultural tendency toward busyness.
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