ABSTRACT
For example, NATO features prominently in “what now?” scenarios concerning European and transatlantic security relations. But highly regarded realists have argued with equal certitude and based on the same core premises that NATO has become irrelevant and is likely to collapse; remains alive by
dint of inertia but will wither away gradually; and is as important as ever and should expand (see, respectively, Mearsheimer 1990; Waltz 1993; Kissinger 1994; Kissinger may not qualify as a “neo” realist, but thus far his position seems the most likely to be vindicated by events). Neoliberal institutionalists, for their part, to date have said relatively little systematically about security relations in general or NATO in particular, though contemporary versions of older liberal traditions, in the form of the “democratic peace” (Doyle 1986) and “collective security” (Kupchan and Kupchan 1991), speak to both.
