ABSTRACT
In retrospect, the survival of NATO in the 1960s and early 1970s seems to have been inevitable. At the time, however, many prominent observers predicted otherwise. Henry Kissinger, among others, expected that the alliance would neither survive nor prove effective at deterring external challengers in future years. During the Berlin crisis of 1958-59, he published an article in the New York Times Magazine that pointed to “grave doubt about our [America’s] willingness to run risks on behalf of our allies, and even about our ability to understand what might constitute a threat.”1 He followed this article with a barrage of prominent pieces making similar arguments in Foreign Affairs, The Reporter, Harper’s Magazine, and a book entitled The Troubled Partnership.2 Kissinger argued that America’s failure to consult more substantively with its West European allies, combined with the gaping power differential on the two sides of the Atlantic, made it unlikely that productive NATO relations could continue much longer.3 This argument became more persuasive as relative Soviet nuclear power grew during the 1960s and as the United States showed a clear desire to avoid direct conflict with Moscow, especially around contested strategic areas – most particularly West Berlin. Kissinger was hardly alone when he wrote, in the aftermath of France’s military withdrawal from NATO command in 1966: “The present crisis marks the end of the phase of US-European relationships that was ushered in by the Greek-Turkish aid program and led through the Marshall Plan to the construction of the Atlantic Alliance.”4
