NATO and Western Security

Abstract

In the early 1990s, NATO faces an identity crisis as the sweeping changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have ‘greatly reduced’ the Soviet threat in Europe which was the Alliance’s cement (US Department of Defense, 1990, p. 2). Clearly, the context of the security situation has been greatly altered from what was true for most of the 1980s and before, and NATO at more than 40 years of age is trying to re-define its role in the post-Cold War world. Among the events and changes which have brought about this need to re-define NATO are: the collapse of the Warsaw Pact; the reunification of Germany; the withdrawal of Soviet troops from much of Eastern Europe; the agreement for both sides to reduce conventional weapons and for both the USA and USSR to withdraw some of their troops from Europe; the clearly obsolete nature of NATO’s ‘flexible response doctrine’ which led to its major revision in July 1990; and decisions by many NATO allies, including the USA, to cut their defence spending; and the dramatic upheaval in the Soviet Union in August and September 1991. The London NATO Summit in early July 1990, in effect, declared the end of the Cold War and began NATO on the process of re-defining itself with the goal of maintaining strong political and security ties between the USA and Western Europe even in the absence of a clear threat. The attitudes of West European publics in the 1980s on NATO, the US defence commitment to Western Europe, the Soviet threat, nuclear weapons, and other defence issues which are examined in this chapter inform us about the conflicts over Western security in the last decade of the Cold War. However, they also provide important insights about the public opinion environment in which NATO must re-shape its nature and role in the 1990s.