Between Hope and Realism: The United States, NATO and a Transatlantic Bargain for the 21st Century

Abstract

When the founders of NATO gathered in Washington in 1949, few could have anticipated that the alliance’s first invocation of its Article 5 guarantee would have been triggered by an attack on US territory. It was thus a hugely symbolic moment when, on 12 September 2001, NATO invoked Article 5 in response to the 11 September (9/11) attacks on New York and Washington, America’s allies coming to the aid of a nation experiencing a sense of shock and vulnerability perhaps only equalled by the attack on Pearl Harbor some 60 years earlier. The events of 9/11 had ramifications that reverberated far and wide, not least because of the way Washington responded to the attacks, launching two major wars in the greater Middle East whose consequences are still playing out today; Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq continue to find themselves plagued by violence, instability and an uncertain future, while the United States and many of its NATO allies are emerging from a decade of conflict economically drained and war-weary. As the introduction to this volume suggests, 9/11 was in many ways a transformative event for NATO. In particular, it brought into sharp focus America’s relationship with the alliance, magnifying existing fault lines and cleavages and casting them in a new and more urgent light.