ABSTRACT
The end of the Cold War, the Soviet threat and the Soviet Union appeared to be the death knell of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. Its security doctrine was obsolete; isolationist mutterings were heard in Washington; and there were numerous efforts to breathe life into competing institutions, like the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) - now the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Western European Union (WEU). In the initial flush of post-Cold War uncertainty, pessimists predicted institutional chaos in Europe's security future that would set European nations against each other and draw the United States and Russia into European security conflicts.2 Optimists, on the other hand, heralded the dawn of a new 'pluralism' in European security arrangements, suggesting a new 'division of labour' rather than a competitive struggle among institutions and between their member states.3 They proclaimed that the European continent's peaceful evolution depended on transcending the Cold War requirement for military alliances. In 1992, President Clinton had placed a premium on relations with Russia, declaring a policy of 'strategic alliance' and a 'new democratic partnership' with the West's former enemy.4 These initial events and trends did not bode well for NATO's future, much less its enlargement.
