Rewriting NATO’s Mindset (with Benedetta Berti)

In this first episode of Season II of The Art of Diplomacy, Florence Gaub speaks with Benedetta Berti, who for the past year has served as Secretary General of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Before that, she was Director for Policy Planning in the Office of the Secretary General, working under both Jens Stoltenberg and Mark Rutte. And: She held the pen for NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept.

Berti traces her path from academic analyst of the Syrian civil war to the heart of the Alliance. What do you do when your analysis and policy recommendations go unheard? In her case, you step into the decision-making circle yourself. She arrived, as she puts it, like a bull in a china shop: armed with the best numbers, but with little skill in building consensus. She tells Florence what she has learned since, from what it takes to keep thirty-two allies together to why a successful negotiation sometimes leaves everyone equally unhappy.

The conversation then turns to the making of the 2022 Strategic Concept, from the difficult language on China to the clear-eyed assessment of Russia, and to why NATO’s intelligence was unambiguous months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If that was a failure of imagination, how can it be prevented? As a possible answer in the toolset, Berti explains the monthly “assumptions check” she ran for the Secretary General’s team, a simple method for exposing unspoken beliefs before reality does it for you.

Last but not least the two friends discuss whether friendship is possible in international politics—and why taking yourself less seriously makes you a better analyst.

This episode was recorded in Rome in October 2026.

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GLOSSARY

• Siege of Aleppo (2016): Battle for the Syrian city of Aleppo, ending with the Syrian government’s recapture of the rebel-held east in December 2016. (https://news.sky.com/story/aleppo-under-siege-a-timeline-10613396))

• NATO Strategic Concept: The document in which the Alliance defines its purpose, threats and priorities. The 2022 concept, adopted at the Madrid summit, is the eighth since 1949 and the first to address China. (https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/strategic-concepts))

• Annexation of Crimea (2014): Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory, after which NATO began to reassess its relationship with Russia. (https://docs.un.org/en/A/RES/68/262))

• Peace Dividend: The expectation after the Cold War that reduced defense spending would free resources for other priorities. (https://globalgovernanceforum.org/what-happened-to-the-peace-dividend/))

• Assumptions Check: An analytical method from the intelligence community that makes core, often unspoken assumptions explicit and tests them against possible developments.