ABSTRACT
One can say that North Atlantic Treaty Organization's primary aim has always been to provide a multilateral and institutional framework for the US military presence in Europe, particularly in Germany. The primary function of this presence is to carry out the US security guarantee, but this central element of the alliance has been both eroded and rebuilt according to periods and priorities. The important point about the change in political generations is that it occurs everywhere, although not with the same impact. The one consequence that does seem universal is that the old generation of European oriented US elites and of Atlanticist-centrist European leaders, whose informal understanding provided the basis for postwar cooperation, has gone for good. If one wants to discern some implications for the Atlantic alliance over the coming period, three tentative generalizations may be made.
