Periodically, GMF hosts a policy and ideas conference on the sidelines of the NATO Summit. Previous conferences have been held in Bucharest, Romania; Riga, Latvia; and Istanbul, Turkey, and have featured heads of state from the United States, Canada, and Afghanistan along with the NATO Secretary General.

These NATO conferences have provided a forum for leading policymakers, opinion leaders, scholars, and business people from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss the most pressing issues facing NATO and the international community.

As the NATO alliance confronts both familiar and new missions, its leaders must possess a clear sense of purpose in their approach to each particular mission. Maintaining the alliance’s preeminent role as the greatest collective security organization in world history requires clarity of vision as well as commitment of resources and effective planning. As NATO steps up to tackle these issues at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, the NATO conferences have provided an open platform for frank dialogue on those issues currently on the alliance agenda. The NATO conferences have followed the structure of GMF’s Brussels Forum and Halifax Forum in that there are both on- and off-the-record panel discussions alongside major speeches.