ABSTRACT
NATO has often been credited, by the Warsaw Treaty Organisation's leadership and by speakers of Western peace movements, with underlying or aggressive intentions and strategies. The United States sees NATO as its essential anchor in Europe, and as the indispensable instrument of its leadership within the West. NATO has served three classical functions: to counterbalance the power of the Soviet Union, to commit the Germans, thereby preventing them from starting a replay of 1914 or 1939, and to bind the United States to Europe. Measured by the evidence derived from past alliance research, NATO is confronted with an extraordinary task. It can no longer derive its legitimacy from the classical function of alliances, to balance a threat. NATO is anxiously defending its monopoly as a security supplier for the West and has extreme problems in abandoning a nuclear strategy whose days have passed. Measured by the evidence derived from past alliance research, NATO is confronted with an extraordinary task.
