Dr Stefanie Babst, NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, discusses the public discussion about NATO’s new Strategic Concept following the Secretary General’s decision that NATO should engage the broader publics in both member and partner countries about the Alliance’s future direction in a transparent and participatory manner. More than two hundred thousand people followed and participated in this first-ever broad-based discussion that NATO launched in September 2009. Whether the “period of inclusiveness” has changed NATO’s public image to the positive depends on the final product –the new Strategic Concept– that the Alliance leaders want to approve at the forthcoming Summit in November 2010 in Portugal.