The Foreign Service Journal, April 2009

A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 “Whither NATO?” Such questions are especially grave this year. The United States will find it much harder to cope with the global array of security issues it faces with a weakened trans-Atlantic security re- lationship; and Europe will find such a weakened relationship harm- ful to its project of economic and political integration. NATO mem- bers need to use this year to begin answering the hard questions that await its leaders at this month’s summit. Yet a future of irrelevance and ineffectiveness for NATO is far from inevitable. For the first time in more than 40 years, France will rejoin the Alliance’s integrated military command structure, a step that could bring with it the resolution of difficult issues surrounding NATO’s co- operation with the European Union. The allies may agree at this month’s summit to launch a major strategic review, which could offer the opportunity to clarify the organization’s pur- poses. And Moscow may continue to assert its interests in ways that force NATO to rally to the deter- rence of aggression aimed at Cen- tral European allies. NATO’s many successes have come in a sustained atmosphere of crisis, characterized by differences among members about means and methods. Accordingly, any forecast of the Alliance’s de- mise should be treated with more than a grain of histori- cal salt. But the key to NATO’s future will be a recognition that the differences facing the organization on its 60th an- niversary are real, and that surmounting those differences will be more difficult and require a greater sustained effort than in the past. Europe and North America should make that effort the center of NATO’s attention in April and be- yond. F O C U S The cases of Afghanistan and enlargement raise questions not of means to ends, but of the ends themselves.