ABSTRACT
All of North Atlantic Treaty Organization's enduring dilemmas are fed by the intrinsic tension between interest and duty. In the case of the Atlantic Alliance, however, two novel factors have lent unprecedented drama to the dilemma. One is the intrusion of nuclear weapons, the other is bipolarity. Hence the unending nuclear dilemmas of the Atlantic Alliance-from the Multilateral Force in the 1960s to Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces in the 1980s. The European continent is divided between two antagonistic blocs, organized by two once-remote superpowers and governed by inimical ideologies and regimes. Unlike previous international systems, post-1945 bipolarity has been short on options and alternatives, and that fact has grated on protectors and protected alike. A tacit condition of the Federal Republic's accession to the Atlantic Alliance has been the assurance that West Germany must not assume the grim role geography has reserved for it: as "glacis" of Western defense, hence as venue and victim of East-West war.
