ABSTRACT
The commitment of a sizable US Navy contingent to the Persian Gulf in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war has focused American attention on questions that have haunted American foreign policy since the Vietnam war: What military role should the United States play in the world? And what, in this context, is the role of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? These are questions that concern our current posture in the Persian Gulf. Unlike the other members of NATO, the United States has security obligations in South Korea, in Japan, in the Pacific more generally, in West Asia, and increasingly so in Central America. With respect to none of these are any of our NATO allies likely to be helpful; yet the Alliance as a whole does benefit from the security role that the United States has globally assumed. Such a gradual and deliberate restructuring of US global military deployments would be in keeping with the basic geopolitical trends in Europe.
