ABSTRACT
In a little-noted exchange at a security conference in Munich in February 1992, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Manfred Worner sought to explain to American politicians in attendance why the United States (US) should remain militarily present in Europe. Some Europeans understand that even with no Soviet threat, there might be a good reason for Americans to stay in Europe: to help maintain the Western European security community. The dilemma for US security policy, and by extension the world, is that balance-of-power internationalism of the Eurocentric variety appears to have lost its relevance, while at the same time Americans are resistant to the call for something like a Wilsonian vision of world order. The distinction is hardly academic, and had been at the core of many of NATO's security debates during the era of the Cold War. Although the celebrated dispute over the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence remains the most well-known of the alliance's strategic controversies.
