ABSTRACT
Progress toward intensified European defense cooperation raises a number of important questions for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance and for US policy. This chapter explores how the United States has reacted to the early stages of the renaissance of European defense cooperation. What is likely to affect the manner in which it reacts in the future? What choices and decisions will the United States face and how should it attempt to influence the process? The Dutch parliamentarian's two simple inquiries had revealed a fundamental and profound truth about the US attitude toward European defense cooperation. The many barriers to European defense cooperation material, military, historical, political and psychological have throughout most of the last 40 years been the source of substantial inertia. A great variety of domestic and international factors other than the goal of strengthening the NATO consensus influences US policy decisions.
