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1 1 (June 2018)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaamq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Key Points * The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established to meet the security threat posed by the Soviet Union. Often overlooked, though, are the ways in which it has provided the material and behavioral grounds for the larger liberal order in Europe to emerge. * Given the multilateral character of the alliance and the sometimes uneven US leadership, NATO has actually proved relatively adept at meeting changes in the security environment. * Security free-riding by allies is a perennial problem. But US global leadership has been minimally constrained by alliance partners because American power has been seen as indispensable to European peace and stability. A standard account of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is that it was established to meet the threat posed to Europe by Stalin's Soviet Union and that, without that threat, it has struggled to adjust to the post-Cold War world.' It is also the conventional view that NATO, as an alliance and a bureaucracy, has been less than adept in meeting evolving security challenges. As the current American president suggested, NATO is, like an eight-track tape player, obsolete.2 Of course, there is more than a grain of truth in these characterizations. But such standard accounts often overstate or miss important truths about the alliance. Beyond Deterrence NATO's birth in 1949 with the North Atlantic Treaty was driven by the Soviet Union. Economically on its knees, politically unstable, and with its various militaries demobilized, Western Europe faced a Stalin-led Kremlin with a still-massive Red Army that was in an increasingly dominant position in Central and Eastern Europe. If the challenge were to be met, it could not be done without the United States. While it was also demobilizing at a staggering rate after World War II, the United States was the only power with sufficient economic and military potential to plausibly be the cornerstone for a mul- tination effort to meet the Kremlin's challenge. If this multilateral effort were to take place, two fundamental things would have to occur. First, Wash- ington's elected leadership would need to overcome its quasi-isolationist tendencies-no sure thing given Harry Truman's view of the American military's role in the world and those of a Dewey-led Republican Party.3 Second, the capitals of Western Europe would have to set aside long-standing, often bitter enmities among themselves. Combined with the multifaceted character and scale of the strategic problem facing the West, nothing was inevitable. Although the lesson of Munich was part of the strategic debate, it was not yet dominant, and var- ious softer forms of appeasement policies toward Moscow were alive as well. However, if there were to be a global order worth its name, the first half AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

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