ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the altered strategic environment confronting US policy-making elites in the 1990s, and focuses on three issues. These issues include: the dynamics of structural change in the international system, and in particular its impact on alliances. These also includes the extent to which these theoretical discussions are relevant to the current strategic environment, the power of the United States, and to North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and the implications of the matters for US security policy in the 1990s. The chapter argues that the 1990s may be regarded as a decade of grace, in which the United States will continue to possess the capabilities and political resources to conduct security policy with considerable flexibility. Students of international relations have long attempted to identify and explain a phenomenon observed throughout recorded history: the constant ebbing and flowing of the relative power position of societies, nations, and states.
