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NATO’S RELEVANCE IN POST COLD-WARERA 
Prelude
What happens to alliances when their precipitating threatsdisappear? Understood in Realist terms, alliances should not outlivethe threats they were created to address. As coalitions of statesaggregating their capabilities to cope with common enemies,alliances should have no purpose beyond deterrence or defense,and no resources beyond the power and purpose of their members.When threats disappear, allies lose their reason for cooperating, andthe coalition will break apart. Consistent with the theoreticalunderpinnings of realist theory, early in the post–Cold War periodmany scholars predicted NATO’s demise. Yet a decade after thedisappearance of the Soviet threat, NATO still exists. Now thequestion is ‘why?’ Does it have still any importance? Is it still servingits member countries? That’s exactly what we are here to discuss.
Flash Back 
Before finding out its relevance we must recollect the issues inwhich NATO was built. NATO was established in 4
th
April, 1949.TheUSA was the main initiator behind its establishment. So it is not sodifficult to interpret that she had a huge interest behind its
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establishment. To fight against the Soviet threat was the main goal. The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one ormore of them in Europe or North America
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shall be considered an attack against them all. Consequently theyagree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense will assist the Party orParties being attacked, individually and in concert with the otherParties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armedforce, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. This attack was mainly Soviet attack. Though the Soviet threat of attack is gone since 1991, the question of collective security Still exists. The world is still facing different threatslike terrorism, fundamentalism. Probability of rising of some other stateagainst USA is also an important issue. And that’s why NATO stillexists.
NATO’s activities in the post cold war era: KeyEvents
NATO began to change to a limited degree in the late 1980s as a resultof the easing of the Cold War.41 The number and scale of allianceexercises declined as Gorbachev’s Soviet Union reduced its militarypresence in Europe, arms control negotiations increased in numberand scope, and the opposing alliances initiated a process of confidence-building measures. NATO also shifted its nuclear strategyindirectly, as a result of the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-range NuclearForces Treaty of 1987, which eliminated a class of nuclear weaponsthat had been integral to the alliance’s strategy For crediblythreatening nuclear escalation.NATO’s real transformation began with the London Declaration of 1990, which stated that the alliance did not consider the Soviet Unionand Warsaw Pact adversaries and invited them to establish diplomaticcontacts with NATO. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in1991 removed the
de facto
main adversary of NATO. This caused astrategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature and tasks. In practicethis ended up entailing a gradual (and still ongoing) expansion of NATOto Eastern Europe, as well as the extension of its activities to areasthat had not formerly been NATO concerns. The first post-Cold Warexpansion of NATO came with the reunification of Germany on 3October 1990, when the former East Germany became part of theFederal Republic of Germany and the alliance. This had been agreed inthe Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet approval
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