Introduction

The words North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and crisis have been paired almost from the moment the ink was dry on the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. Even in the areas of nuclear weapons and doctrine—the most emotionally charged of all NATO issues in public debate—the allies have demonstrated over the years that they can grapple with intense feelings, as illustrated by the initial deployments of intermediate-range nuclear forces in December 1983. The likelihood that many issues on the Western alliance agenda can be met and managed successfully without radical departure from past practice must not become an excuse to pretend that nothing fundamental is changing. The test for the alliance on East-West relations thus goes beyond traditional jockeying over the modalities of providing for security or dividing the financial burdens of defense. Economics have thus become a security issue tor the alliance. The geographic scope of the NATO alliance was precisely delimited at its founding.