NATO peacekeeping operations and their geopolitical significance: Comparative analysis of Kosovo and Afghanistan peacekeeping missions

The main purpose of the North-Atlantic Alliance was to protect the war-torn Europe from the influence of the Soviet Union, therefore the main reason of its creation in 1949 was exactly this.
The ending of the Cold War fueled ethnic, territorial and other types of conflicts. Already the danger was unpredictable, which was threatening the security of the alliance itself. Right from this time the term crisis management comes into active use and it holds important place in NATO activities.
NATO faced the certainty to fulfill such new tasks as implementing peacekeeping operations, managing crises, avoiding humanitarian catastrophes, scientific cooperation, etc. In the era of globalization, when economization, democratization, informatization creates the unprecedented opportunities for development, security has become especially important, but all this makes the international relations system more vulnerable against such challenges as terrorism, hybrid warfare, cyber-terrorism, use of weapons of mass destruction.