ABSTRACT

At the beginning of a new millennium, the Western European Union (WEU) is in the position of disappearing as an international organisation. Although it survived for over fifty years, this fact should not come as a great surprise as its role has always been an uncertain one. During the Cold War the WEU existed in a state of almost suspended animation. It served occasionally as a mechanism to dissipate some of the centrifugal forces between Western Europe and the United States but even its most fervent supporters would have struggled to describe its work as essential.1