NATO in the 21st Century: A Strategic Vision 11 pages, pdf  Download Back

NATO in the 21st Century: A Strategic Vision

Publisher: Robert E. Hunter

Volume: 11 pages, pdf

Descripton:

Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells of a conversation he had with the late Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev in the latter days of the Soviet Union. Crowe, an Oklahoman not known for mincing words, asked, "Tell me Marshal, how come you never attacked us? Was it the fact that we had the bomb? Was it the Seventh Army and the Sixth Fleet?" Whether Marshal Akhromeyev was dissembling or not will never be known, but he reportedly responded, "No. It was because we knew that, if we took on one country, we were going to have to take on 16.

The United States and its Allies are engaged today in a debate about enlarging the NATO of "the 16," and it appears that the 16 Allies will admit the first new members since Spain entered a decade ago. Enlargement is about many things, most particularly about the willingness and commitment of the United States to continue its basic engagement in the outside world in general and in European security in particular. We will decide whether we will continue to play a role that has been indispensable at every critical moment in European history in this century. Our debate should confirm that the United States is, and will remain, a European power, because it is in the self-interest of this country not to depart from Europe in 1998, just as we decided in the late 1940s not to repeat the mistake of 1919.

This article examines the status of four enduring "grand purposes" of NATO and then describes and evaluates the arrangements for implementing them--including the landmark decision to expand the Alliance formally by taking in three new members. The membership applications of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic represent new beginnings for them and for NATO. And as NATO seeks to redefine its Strategic Concept for the early 21st century, the Alliance will be preparing to deal with challenges unimagined by its founders and their Cold War successors. NATO is alive and well and is in the process of defining its forms and functions for a new era. Indeed, the work of creating a new architecture for 21st-century European security is essentially completed.