NATO at 50: Book Review

Review for
NATO at Fifty: Perspectives on the Future of the Atlantic Alliance

by Brian Collester
Reprinted from Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post Soviet Democratization (Spring, 2000)

Except for true believers, NATO's golden anniversary in 1999 was not a celebration of "many happy returns." American public opinion expressed gratitude for the alliance's many signal achievements in keeping the cold war peace, but there was little enthusiasm for its continuation-successful or otherwise. The USSR had collapsed like the Berlin Wall, and futurists turned to environmental challenges, the global economy, and threats from terrorism. Conventional military threat-scenarios, even after Iraq and Bosnia, seemed decidedly unconventional; passé perhaps?

Is NATO an outdated alliance in search of a mission, as detractors claim? Or is it an unparalleled opportunity as asserted by Andrew J. Goodpaster, the former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, to whom Susan Eisenhower's NATO at Fifty is dedicated? Eisenhower, President of the Eisenhower Institute in Washington, DC, has assembled twenty-eight thought-provoking essays that agree unanimously about NATO's continuation but are wide-ranging and often in disagreement in their conclusions about policies NATO should adopt. The authors, both American and European, (although heavily US-based), represent, as US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan says, "a formidable array of scholars" as well as NATO participants and policy makers.

This volume will be an invaluable source of information about NATO, and about the perspectives of some of the major commentators on the subject. The essays will be of inestimable benefit to graduate students and other analysts of the subject who wish a broad sweep of the concepts and challenges as well as options for the future of the North Atlantic alliance. The length of the essays (5-7 pages) also facilitates a broad overview of the subject in a single volume. It is written in myriad styles, but the essays are mercifully free of jargon and government-speak.

...This book will provide any interested reader with much to think about, including many new ideas that even students of the subject may not have contemplated.

Bryan Collester
Principia College