ABSTRACT
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has broad aims exceeding the bounds of military strategy, such as strengthening the economic stability of its members and generally fostering closer relations among them. As an alliance, NATO is characterized by an internal imbalance in that its principal deterrent force is in the hands of a single state: the great power of the alliance, the United States. The remaining allies possess only secondary forces, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Although the British and French possess nuclear forces, these forces are of modest dimensions, representing altogether but a small fraction of American nuclear power. For countless generations Europe has been divided and torn, and its different states in constant strife with one another. Europeans reproach the United States with the claim that the grudging American attitude regarding the establishment of a European force is incompatible with its advocacy of European unity. The gap between powerful and weak states has grown in the nuclear era.
