NATO and Aegean Disputes: The Cold War and After

Abstract

After years of ambivalence and caution, the Clinton administration appears to have finally discovered its replacement for the dogma of containment which defined America’s international orientation during the decades of the Cold War. The new master strategy is to be the conversion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), through an open-ended process of gradual enlargement, to the powerhouse of a new European security system and the promoter of democratic progress, economic development, stability, and co-operation across the entire continent. Calling the alliance ‘the bedrock of our common security’, President Bill Clinton has declared himself confident that ‘NATO can do for Europe’s East what it did for Europe’s West: prevent a return to local rivalries, strengthen democracy against future threats, and create the conditions for prosperity to flourish’.¹ Although the president and his advisors have been emphasizing the benefits of the expanded alliance for the Europeans, especially those who have only recently emerged from decades of stifling communist oppression, it is safe to assume that, for the administration’s strategists, the step-by-step enlargement of NATO under Washington’s direction — rather than the strengthening of purely European organizations — represents the safest way to preserve and augment the influence of the United States across all of Europe in the uncertain times ahead.