Nato S Durability In A Post Cold War World

Examines how NATO has adapted and endured after the end of the Cold War, transforming itself to deal with a host of new security challenges. Why is it that despite the end of the Cold War and the almost constant controversies surrounding the alliance’s role in the world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is still a prominent and vital player in international security? Joe Burton provides an in-depth analysis of NATO’s changing role in the post–Cold War era and its ability to survive, adapt, and meet the needs of its members in an increasingly turbulent, globalized security environment. He offers a historically and theoretically informed account of NATO that isolates the core dynamics that have held the alliance together in troubled times. In particular, he examines a series of processes and events—from the 1990 Gulf War to the rise of the Islamic State—that help explain NATO’s continuing relevance. Joe Burton is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and the coeditor (with James Headley and Andreas Reitzig) of Public Participation in Foreign Policy.

Established in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) performed its assigned mission exceedingly well as it secured peace for its member states and avoided military confrontation between the superpowers during the remaining four decades of the Cold War. But with the dramatic changes that began in 1989, an identity crisis has plagued NATO. Whereas the Cold War years had essentially defined who would be fighting whom in a future conflict, the uncertain post-1989 years are introducing new and possibly calamitous variables. Despite the fact that hardly a voice has been heard calling for its dissolution and that states from the former Warsaw Pact are seeking membership, NATO's members face the demanding task of defining the new strategic challenges and formulating appropriate policies and responses. The articles in this volume combine to present a comprehensive investigation of the diverse problems confronting NATO. The contributions each provide relevant historical background before analyzing current conditions and projecting into the future. An opening essay offers an overview of NATO after forty-five years and is followed by others dealing with NATO's structural changes for the 1990s, NATO's shifting strategy, and NATO's developing connections with other international organizations, such as the United Nations, CSCE, and the European Community. The concluding part of the volume includes essays focusing on NATO's associations with the United States, the Anglo-American "special relationship," the Balkans, the former Warsaw Pact states, and the Middle East.

This book examines episodes in NATO’s history from the founding of the North Atlantic Alliance in 1949 to its transition to the post-Cold War order in the 1990s, with an eye to better understanding its present and its future. NATO’s history, now running over seventy years, can no longer be framed in Cold War terms alone. Nor can the organization be understood fully as a post-Cold War institution. Today’s NATO is a product of both these eras. This edited volume offers a reconsideration of NATO’s place in history, looking both at how the alliance coped with the Cold War and how it managed its difficult transition to the post-Cold War international order. Contributors recount how NATO coped with its many political and operational challenges, which on occasion threatened – but never managed to – derail the alliance. The book opens new vistas for explaining how NATO thrived and survived for decades and ponders whether it will survive for many more. The book will be of great value to scholars, students and policymakers interested in Politics, International Studies, Global Affairs and Public Policy. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Strategic Studies.

This book analyses the evolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its policies from the Cold War until today. NATO’s future cannot be fully understood without analysing its past: the origins of its structure and goals, and their transformation over time. By exploring NATO’s geopolitical and military role at crucial points throughout history, this edited volume considers the challenges and threats which have faced the alliance, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. It covers highly-debated and unresolved issues such as budgetary burden-sharing and the military transatlantic gap, the enlargement process, and the role of Asia in influencing NATO’s policies. Combining a historical approach with international perspectives, this book is an interdisciplinary read that will appeal to scholars of diplomatic history and international relations. Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book offers an original and distinct analysis of NATO's post-Cold War evolution. Unlike so much of the available literature, it is not focused on what in the author's opinion NATO should be doing now that the Cold War is over. Rather, the author offers a comprehensive analysis and overview of the extent to which NATO can undertake new roles, tasks and missions in light of the extent to which it has retained significance and vitality as an international institution. The book's originality also lies in the way in which the author discusses NATO's adaptation within a framework provided by international relations theory, and in particular concepts which stress the role and importance of transnational political processes and international regimes. So far these have been little used in the analysis of military security relations and institutions. The book will be of interest to those researching and teaching international relations, European politics and security studies, as well as all those seeking a better understanding of the post-Cold War survival and development of a key international security institution.

This book takes a new approach to answering the question of how NATO survived after the Cold War by examining its complex relationship with the United States. A closer look at major NATO engagements in the post-Cold War era, including in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, reveals how the US helped comprehensively reshape the alliance. In every conflict, there was tension between the United States and its allies over mission leadership, political support, legal precedents, military capabilities, and financial contributions. The author explores why allied actions resulted in both praise and criticism of NATO’s contributions from American policymakers, and why despite all of this and the growing concern over the alliance’s perceived shortcomings the United States continued to support the alliance. In addition to demonstrating the American influence on the alliance, this works demonstrates why NATO’s survival is beneficial to US interests.

Since the foundation of the Atlantic Alliance after World War II, the face of world politics, and consequently of NATO, has changed dramatically. NATO after Fifty Years examines, from a wide range of perspectives, the past, present, and future of the alliance, now in the throes of its most uncertain period. The contributors to this volume bring a diversity and breadth of perspectives that will make this book an invaluable teaching tool for courses relating to U.S. defense policy, arms control and the military in politics, international organizations, war and peace, international conflict, and government and politics in Europe.