ABSTRACT
It is 11 September 2001. The morning rush hour is coming to its bustling end on the highways, byways and subways of New York. High up in the twin towers of the World Trade Center people are settling down to work as the New York financial and legal center gets into its stride. Suddenly, at 8:46 a.m., as if from nowhere, an American Airlines Boeing 767 slams into the North Tower. Al Qaeda has begun its day of carnage. Two hours later over 3000 people are dead, the twin towers are no more, and parts of the Pentagon and Pennsylvania smolder with the wreckage of hatred, fundamentalism and terror. In a few moments NATO’s world and its relationships are changed forever. It is the beginning of the end of European isolationism. It is the end of the beginning of American unilateralism. It is also the beginning of a new, big NATO, as strategic terror, state failure and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction combine with the re-emergence of Russia and China and rogue states to create NATO’s new world. A strategic cocktail that is given added spice by the clash of Western civilizations;
as American unilateralism confronts European institutionalism. It is a world gone mad. Big security has returned.
