Security in the Euro-Atlantic Area

Abstract

NATO begins the year 2000, ready to play its part in helping to create a "Europe whole and free. This is the possibility created by circumstance and by all the efforts made during the 1 990s to adapt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to new realities and to European security needs of the next century. But a Europe "whole and free" can become reality only if the lessons of the past century, the most tragic in history, are well learned; and only if each of the nations and peoples in the Atlantic Alliance is prepared to complete the work begun by NATO, other institutions, and a wide variety of thoughtful leaders, in and out of government, in the wake of the Cold War. Following the Second World War, a number of far-sighted people on both sides of the Atlantic understood that Europe could not return to the politics of the past that had produced the First and Second World Wars; the result of that vision was creation of the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Communities, and other institutions, both within Europe and linking it to North America. At heart, they were all directed toward security, in the broadest sense of the term. For the next four decades, these institutions -and the nations and peoples belonging to themstood together against challenges and threats, both from abroad and from within; in the process, they also created a period of unparalleled prosperity within Western Europe and solidified democratic rights and practices throughout the region. This was an achievement of historical proportions. After the Berlin Wall opened in November 1989, followed by the collapse of almost all the communist regimes of Central Europe and then the Soviet Union itself, many people believed it was time for at least one of these institutions -NATOalso to be dismantled. It had served its essential purpose, well and truly, as its adversary, the Warsaw Pact, was consigned to the "dustbin of history." Some commentators even