Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

The Newcastle University research output collection, currently available on ePrints, will shortly be moving to a new open repository platform, Figshare. To prepare for the data migration we have paused adding new content to ePrints, and will resume once the new repository is launched. During this time you will continue to have access to ePrints (but no new content will appear). We will share updates here when available.

NATO: A Critical Approach

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Katharine A. M. WrightORCiD

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.

Abstract

This chapter offers a critical rethinking of NATO at a time of intensified geopolitical contestation and internal fragility. It challenges dominant portrayals of NATO as a coherent and values-driven defense alliance by tracing the contradictions that underpin its evolving strategic identity. Drawing on feminist and critical security scholarship, it explores how NATO is constituted through competing discourses, everyday practices, and contested norms, particularly in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the resurgence of authoritarian populism within member states, and the disruptive return of a second term Trump administration. Through the lens of ‘critical friendship’, it engages NATO not as a fixed entity but as a site of ongoing negotiation, tension, and transformation. It foregrounds the significance of gender, power, and militarism in shaping NATO’s policies, self-narratives, and global engagements, and argues for the necessity of reflexive, critical scholarship to interrogate what is at stake when the Alliance invokes security, resilience, and unity in a fractured world.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Jude S-C, Wright KAM

Editor(s): Jude S-C; Wright KAM

Publication type: Book Chapter

Publication status: In Press

Book Title: Critical Perspectives on NATO: Feminist Insights

Year: 2026

Acceptance date: 04/09/2025

Series Title: Feminist Reimagining of International Studies

Publisher: Bristol University Press

Place Published: Bristol

Notes: 9781529248340 ebook ISBN

Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item

ISBN: 9781529248326

Share