NATO missile defense policy

The goal of the study is to assess the future outlook of the NATO anti-missile shield development. The following objectives were formulated in order to achieve the set goal: to analyze the significance placed on missile defense by the political leaders of NATO; to assess the impact of the NATO anti-missile shield development in Europe on regional safety; to reveal the national interest of the members and non-members of NATO to contribute to and develop the NATO missile defense system. The following research methods were employed: an analysis of primary and secondary sources and a case study. The method of thematic content analysis was used to analyze the foreign relations policy. The study had the following restrictions: time restriction, i.e. the analysis was limited to the data as of 2002, and spatial restriction, i.e. only the European part of the NATO MDS was analyzed. The research encompassed the use of the regional security complex theory by Buzan and the thematic content analysis by O. Holsti in order to reach inter-disciplinary conclusions. The results achieved busing these two methods were then compared