ABSTRACT
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization Council of December 1990 envisaged the creation of a network of "interlocking institutions" in Europe. In contemplating the governance of the Western European and transatlantic security systems, one gets the impression more of overlapping and competing, rather than interlocking and complementary, institutions. The European Coal and Steel Community, as one of the founding pillars of the European Community, was at the onset also meant to foster Western cohesion by the overcoming of internal Western European cleavages and conflicts through common control of strategic resources. The Anglo-Italian declaration on European security and defense of October 1991, and the Franco-German proposal of the same month, highlight these differences. The complicated decisionmaking structure of the European Union might make it difficult for the United States to negotiate with its European partners, who could always take refuge in the argument that they cannot restart negotiations within the European Union once the latter had achieved a consensus.
