It must be sufficiently flexible not only militarily, but also politically, to play its part in resolving security questions which may not simply consist of direct threats to the Alliance itself.

The continuing adaptation of the Alliance is guided by three fundamental objectives: to ensure the Alliance’s military effectiveness and ability to perform its traditional mission of collective defence while undertaking new military roles; to preserve the transatlantic link, by strengthening NATO as a forum for political consultation and military cooperation; and, to strengthen the European role within the Alliance by creating the possibility for NATO-supported task forces to perform missions under the direction of the Western European Union nations and, in time, of the European Union. Responding to the need to ensure the Alliance's continued military effectiveness, member countries have agreed on changes in NATO's integrated military structure designed to provide command and force structures adapted to the needs of the 21st century.

The role of the integrated military structure of NATO is to provide the organisational framework for fulfilling the military responsibilities and undertaking the military tasks given to the Alliance by its member governments. Some of those tasks have to do with the basic obligation of the Alliance to defend its member countries against threats to their security, in accordance with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Others relate to the implementation of the Alliance’s new missions, that is, operations other than those required by the commitment to collective defence of Article 5. NATO has very few permanent military forces and only relatively small integrated, multinational staffs at the various military headquarters and agencies which make up the integrated military command structure. The majority of so-called ”NATO Forces” are forces that remain under national control and only become available to the Alliance in specific circumstances. They are then placed under the responsibility of NATO military commanders. The integrated military command structure is the agreed basis for organising, training and controlling these forces.

The new security environment has allowed NATO countries to reorganise their forces. In most cases, this has meant introducing major reductions in nuclear weapons, cutting back conventional ground, air and naval forces by 30% to 40%, and reducing the levels of readiness at which many of these forces had previously been maintained.

NATO countries have also endorsed a blueprint for developing a new NATO military command structure designed to enable the Alliance to carry out the whole range of its missions more effectively, including crisis management, peace-keeping or other peace support operations.

The new structure comprises two Strategic Commands (SCs) – one for the Atlantic and one for Europe – with a simplified subordinate structure of regional and sub-regional commands. It involves a reduction in the number of command headquarters located in different member countries, from 65 to 20. The result is designed to provide a structure that is more flexible and better adapted to NATO’s present-day requirements.