ABSTRACT
Few observers challenge the proposition that a tightly coupled security community exists today among the nations of North America, the European Union, and NATO. No country within this transatlantic region expects to go to war with any other. Apart from Greece and Turkey, none devotes financial or organizational resources to the possibility of war with any other-or, as far as we know, even has military contingency plans for such an eventuality. Observers do differ, however, on whether this security community can be sustained, let alone expanded, in the new era, in the absence of the cohesive bond that the Soviet threat once exerted (Harries 1993; Mearsheimer 1990).
