By constantly developing military capabilities and structural flexibility, the Alliance effectively adjusts its resources and functioning to address the changing challenges to the security of its members.

NATO’s fundamental courses of action are outlined in the Strategic Concept adopted in 2022. The Concept reflects changes to the Euro-Atlantic security environment following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. In line with the document, the Alliance has three key missions:

• collective defence resulting from Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, including effective deterrence; 
• crisis management to respond to a full spectrum of challenges based on a unique set of political and military capabilities;
• cooperative security through a network of active partnerships with non-NATO countries and cooperation with other international organisations.

Defence against hybrid threats, cybersecurity, energy security, and new technologies have recently been gaining prominence on NATO’s agenda as well. 

What Poland deems crucial is NATO’s effective deterrence potential and military capabilities, which ensure the realisation of collective defence tasks in the face of increasing military threats in the east and ever more actual hybrid ones. An appropriate answer to these challenges is to improve the effectiveness of NATO’s command structure, as well as to significantly strengthen the eastern flank. NATO’s last summit in Vilnius in July 2023 approved new regional defence plans and a commitment to increase defence spending.

Poland has engaged firmly in the cooperation among NATO’s eastern flank countries in the field of security policy and military cooperation in both allied and regional dimensions. The formats employed in this context include the Bucharest Nine (B9) and the Riga Four (R4).

Poland is actively involved in allied activities. Since joining NATO, we have taken part in virtually all allied operations, and Polish contingents were among the largest in the KFOR and ISAF missions, critical to regional stability. We are active where allied security needs that—in the south or in the east, by regularly patrolling our allies’ airspace as part of the Air Policing mission, as well as by taking part in a battle group in Latvia in the framework of the eFP and in Romania in the framework of the tFP.

The Alliance’s regional and global effectiveness is largely determined by the active development of political and economic stability in NATO’s neighbourhood through a network of partnerships and targeted assistance programmes. Also, the Alliance provides practical support to Ukraine in the form of non-lethal military equipment, humanitarian aid, and trainings. Poland is among the most committed Allies to promoting cooperation and reforms in such partner countries as Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, and in the Western Balkans. We also believe that the Alliance should remain open to the membership of countries that are able to meet the established criteria and should actively support the aspiring countries in their reforms. We find it essential to tighten cooperation with the EU, especially in the fight against hybrid threats and in terms of building resilience.

For Poland, NATO membership also means permanent strengthening of our own defence capabilities. Poland continues to improve the quality of its armed forces and makes a significant contribution to the allied collective defence and emergency response, regardless of the direction and nature of threats. This is also reflected in the location of the following NATO structures on our territory: Multinational Corps Northeast in Szczecin, NATO Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) in Bydgoszcz, NATO Communications and Information Agency CIS Support Unit in Bydgoszcz, Command of 3rd NATO Signal Battalion in Bydgoszcz, NATO Military Police Centre of Excellence in Bydgoszcz, NATO Force Integration Unit in Bydgoszcz, NATO Counter Intelligence Centre of Excellence in Kraków, and Command of the Multinational Division Northeast in Elbląg.