NATO has its own staff but the organization that will be gathering downtown May 23 to May 26 is the Parliamentary Assembly. Founded in 1955, delegates to the NATO PA are chosen by member countries and reflect the political composition of the parliament they’re coming from. About 369 people will be attending the PA as a delegate, observer or member from an associate country, according to NATO’s website.
“There are broader political security goals that they have an interest in,” said Patrick Haney, a political science professor at Miami University. “And this is a way to connect NATO to the broader representative assemblies of these countries and hopefully therefore, to the people of those countries.”
The Parliamentary Assembly meets twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, in a member country. This is the first time since 2003 that the NATO PA is meeting in the U.S.
“I hope that when they come, they listen to the voices of Dayton, Ohio, and take to heart whatever we’re thinking and saying about important matters of not just defense, but war,” said Vaughn Shannon, a political science professor at Wright State University and a board member of the Dayton Peace Museum.
Why are they coming to Dayton?
NATO’s parliamentary assembly is meeting in Dayton to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian Civil War and were negotiated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The war was a three-and-a-half-year armed conflict in the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. NATO armed forces played a role in ending the war, including sending U.S. air strikes, according to reporting at the time.
But the other reason is a local congressman’s longtime connections to both Dayton and NATO.
Credit: MSC/Ellen Kallscheuer
Credit: MSC/Ellen Kallscheuer
U.S. Representative Mike Turner was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2023 to 2025. In 2011, he was appointed as the chairman of the U.S. delegation to NATO, and he currently serves as Vice-Chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, according to his website.
“Because (Turner) had ties to the Dayton Accords, and because it’s his district and because it’s the 30th anniversary, I think that’s what helped make the case for Dayton in the eyes of everybody,” Shannon said.
He added while this decision was made more than a year ago while Joe Biden was still president, Turner may have guessed this would be a good time to boost the U.S.’s role in NATO.
“I’d say at a time where public opinion might be questioning our international commitments, it’s maybe a way to try to boost that,” Shannon said.
What topics will be discussed?
The war between Russia and Ukraine and America’s position in international relations are the two topics most likely to be discussed, experts said.
Grant Neeley, a professor of political science at the University of Dayton, said some topics he expects to be discussed included security, the economic concerns of tariffs, and in Europe, increasing defense and military spending as well as expanding industrial military production.
Northern European countries like Poland and Norway will likely want to discuss the Artic region, he said, since both China and Russia have been encroaching into the region.
Shannon and Haney both said Ukraine will be one of the biggest topics of conversation.
But the point of the conference is to meet with colleagues, establish goodwill among countries and produce nonbinding reports to take back to their respective countries and NATO.
“I think one of the points of coming to the US and showing off the US and bringing this here is to remind Americans about NATO but also remind NATO and show NATO countries about the United States,” Shannon said.
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