NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was born out of the need to strengthen the capacity of a war-devastated Europe in order to defend itself against and deter a Soviet Union which was rapidly consolidating itself under communism and strengthening its military power. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, NATO's primary objective was accomplished without having recourse to any military operation. Today, with no easily defined enemy, NATO is facing an identity crisis. Indeed, since the end of the cold war, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the increasing military imbalance between the United States forces and those of the European members have reduced NATO's cohesiveness as a defense Alliance. The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington and the unprecedented invocation of Article 5 which states: "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and collective self-defense shall be taken" have merely accentuated this trend. In this new era, NATO has to reinterpret its general aim of safeguarding the freedom, common heritage and civilization of its members by promoting stability and well-being in the North Atlantic Area.
The United States, too, would have found itself directly affected economically. Democratic leaders hear from multiple voices that tend to restrain decision-makers and therefore lessen the chance of war' . Now, having Russia as an ally of NATO instead of being an independent coalition member to America in the war against terrorism and future operations in the Middle East will significantly help to level the military capabilities of the European allies when compared to the United States. Indeed, the actions undertaken in the Balkans got their full meaning because of economic reasons. This time, Russian cooperation has made it much easier to isolate al-Qaeda and the Taliban and to pressure other regimes that harbor terrorists. For 78 days of air strikes, NATO targeted the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's air defenses. In other recent American-led military campaigns-such as the 1999 war in Kosovo-Russia's opposition made it more difficult to keep a coalition united and to conduct the war. NATO members, excluding United States, must significantly improve their military capabilities if they do not want to find themselves sidelined in military missions and operations. In 1999, the alliance launched an 11-week campaign of air strikes involving more than 1,000 warplanes against Yugoslavia, which was at war with Kosovo. So, in order to prevent such a disastrous scenario, NATO's members, whose economies are based on a capitalist and liberal system, took military, peace-keeping and disarmament actions in the Balkans. Increasing the range of the Alliance's reach has proved to benefit other countries as well. In fact, the greatest challenge of NATO today is to identify and agree on the common interests of its member countries. Production is oriented toward the international market and hence efficiency is increased and worldwide wealth maximized. As a result, Europeans have been either sidelined or completely absent from all major peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians during the past 30 years. Europe should play a "more prominent role than the one that is currently hardly noticeable", he said.
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Acceptance Essays
