The analysis was made in a new white paper study led by researchers with the University of Southern California and funded by the Minerva Research Initiative, a U.S. Defense Department program that partners with universities to conduct research into present and future conflict.
The paper was prepared for the "Near Crisis Project: Why What You Don't Know Can Hurt You" workshop, in partnership with the Atlantic Council, in Washington, D.C., in January and published Tuesday on Minerva Research Initiative's website.
The study particularly addresses how the U.S. government can better respond to "near crisis" situations that have not yet tipped over into armed conflict.
"A quick scan of NATO documents related to crisis management reveals that the word 'crisis' is treated as a grab-bag concept that can refer to any significant problem that could somehow pose a security threat and that seems to demand some type of action," the researchers wrote.
The researchers said that such "crises" can take multiple forms, from purely political or economic to situations already caught up in full-scale armed conflict.
"This is not surprising; the word 'crisis' is highly adaptable, and our common understanding of what might constitute a national, regional, or global 'crisis' can certainly cover a huge number of scenarios that might impose a wide range of perceived costs or pain," the researchers wrote.
The U.S. Defense Department and NATO might respond to everything from the "climate crisis" to a "humanitarian crisis" that might bring widespread starvation -- to open war.
"Each scenario is indeed a crisis, each might be a crisis that NATO leaders feel compelled to respond to, and each would demand radically different policy tools to meet the specific nature of the threat," the researchers wrote.
"But if NATO's new Strategic Concept is to provide more concrete insight into this Core Task, it would be helpful to know what it is, specifically, that NATO is trying to prevent and manage."
The researchers said the issues particularly stem from vague language in the Strategic Concept, a 2010 agreement that outlined three core tasks for the alliance: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. NATO leaders met in June 2022 and reaffirmed the value of those three tasks with some minor adjustments in language.
However, "a lot has changed" in the geopolitical landscape in the 12 years since the agreement was reached, the researchers said. They highlighted Russia's invasion of Ukraine and "its confrontational behavior more broadly" as well as "an assertive China" which "creates a strategic gravitational pull that must be treated as a global priority."
The researchers defined the pathways for situations to develop from "preceding near crises" into full-blown crisis mode, while also describing that some incidents are "Stand-Alone Near Crises."
"These cases are often buried in the back of newspapers, if reported at all, especially in certain regions of the world," the study reads.
The researchers gave the Russia-Georgia conflict of 2008 the categorization of "preceding near-crisis" in which NATO officials went through specific steps to in the escalation process.
"It began as a near crisis that seemed to de-escalate about a month after it appeared, to then reemerge as a full-blown crisis that led to war several months later," the study reads.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian Black Brant missile launch in 1995 was classified as a stand-alone near crisis by researchers.
"The Black Brant missile case is a one-sided near crisis," the researchers wrote.
"While Russian political and military leaders were on high alert for just under thirty minutes as they faced a potentially severe threat to basic values and limited time to respond, other key actors in the case - the Norwegians and the Americans - were unaware of the brewing near crisis until after it was over."
The researchers outlined new terms on the path to crisis officials could use to better classify and respond to emerging situations, including what they called "high-risk episodes" and "Bolt-from-the-Blue" cases.
The study defined high-risk episodes as a form of lower-level conflict different from near crises that are perceived a threat to basic values and a heightened probability of military hostilities, but in which officials do not yet perceive finite time to respond to the threat.
Bolt crises were defined as cases "of great concern" that "are sudden and unforeseen," skipping the normal escalation process.
According to the researchers, the study offers officials "early warning and enhanced opportunities to initiate policy steps that could manage potential dangers before full crises emerge."
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