ABSTRACT
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been a success story, and its institutions should justifiably share in the credit for the success. That much having been said, there is much to be learned for the future from an examination of NATO's organizational past, with both its achievements and its failures. The Atlantic Union movement, identified for so many years with Clarence Streit, sought a federation of the Western democracies, arguing that conventional alliances have always failed in history and that NATO could scarcely hope to escape a similar fate. The idea of a partnership had survival value, however, and it turned up as a central theme in the approach of the Nixon administration to Europe and NATO. The organization provided the shield behind which NATO members could reconstruct their economies and political systems and then move on to develop the potentials of their societies as best they could.
