ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an analysis of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) rooted in neo-realist international theory. It begins with a brief overview of the main tenets of neo-realist theory. Neo-realism's theory of international politics is based on the conviction that there is an underlying order in human affairs that gives rise to patterned behaviour. The chapter then examines the evolution of NATO in the wake of Cold War bipolarity and considers the dilemmas and ambiguities surrounding the Alliance's role in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century. The central argument is that the European security system - with NATO at its core - is being refashioned by the confluence of two distinct power configurations: global unipolarity and regional multipolarity in Europe. The power maximisation strategy has had two elements. The first has been the enlargement of NATO to incorporate former communist states. The second element has been regional military crisis management as an instrument for collective milieu shaping.
