Conclusion: Present and Future Nato Relationships

Abstract

The mixed developments that have occurred in the history of Nato provide a series of important lessons. They bear directly upon the future analysis and definition of policies by Washington and other Alliance capitals. Such a statement is no more than the common observation that shrewd analysis of history brings insights useful in the future. The rub is that there is no certainty or guarantee that the lessons drawn are the right ones. A related observation would be that the Europeans should not necessarily draw for their own policy interests the same lessons as the Americans from experiences since the Second World War. There can be very little disagreement with the fundamental point that Western Europe remains essentially dependent upon the United States for defence. This relates only in part to the argument, increasingly heard in the United States for more than a decade, that the Europeans should do more to defend themselves in conventional terms. The larger reality is that only the nuclear arsenal of the United States can counter in political and symbolic terms the nuclear forces of the Soviet Union. Consequently, at the present time as well as early in the Nato partnership, decisions in Washington have unusually significant bearing on the larger Alliance. For this reason, particular attention here has been paid to the dynamic aspects of change in U.S. administrations, and their foreign policies, in discussing Nato relationships.