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Abstract:
NATO's present raison d'etre is rooted in its members' national interest having defensive and offensive elements, consisting in both security and autonomy. With security from other great powers all but assured, members seek a greater offensive capacity to shape the international environment. The United States wants legitimacy from its European partners in order to facilitate offensive operations while several European states desire military capabilities for force projection. NATO as an institution is well-suited for hashing out the terms of this exchange, but NATO, as a realist's bargain, portends a troubled marriage, in which levels of anxiety and animosity can best be reduced if the United States brings its own sources of legitimacy to the relationship.
Key words: NATO, cooperation, balancing, realism, transatlantic relations
INTRODUCTION
While many scholars accept the realist origins of the NATO alliance and that it balanced a growing Soviet threat, the modern NATO poses a tougher question: How can realism explain NATO's endurance (Kaplan, 2004: 1 -8; Mastny, 2002; Wallander and Keohane, 1999; Duffield, 1994-1995)? The Soviet threat no longer exists, but NATO has enlarged its membership, expanded its mission, and invested in new capabilities. Realist theory, pegging NATO's fate to that of the Soviet Union, usually casts the alliance as a relic from a classic, bipolar power struggle. Yet, NATO has somehow managed to outlast the pole of power it was created to balance.
Liberal scholars enthusiastically submit that NATO persists because of common ideals that the United States and Europe share and that NATO's continued existence testifies to the true power of ideas over power balancing (Moore, 2003).1 This explanation might persuade realist critics if not for the growing European trend to move toward autonomous military capability, to the point of jeopardizing the consensus necessary to execute combined operations of the alliance (Howorth and Keeler, 2003; Rynning, 2002). Liberal theory expects an increase in the benefits of transatlantic cooperation with the spread of common ideals and competent institutions rather than a race for unilateral policy options. How do we explain the persistence of NATO in a post-Soviet international order while simultaneously explaining the behavior of avowedly liberal members engaged in open competition with one another for a freer hand in world affairs?
Contrary to both realist and liberal...