NATO Expansion and Peace

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the role of NATO has changed since the end of the Cold War. The paper tells us that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, one might have expected that NATO would quietly fade into the background of world affairs, joining the legion of other defunct political institutions. However, this was not how the 1990s played out. Instead, NATO was expanded and given new life through new expansionist policies meant to secure peace and stability throughout non-NATO Europe. The paper goes on to suggest that this transformation, however, has not secured peace but instead serves only to extend and reinforce Western, particularly U.S., interests in Central and Eastern Europe.

From the Paper:

"The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has survived an unimaginable turn of events, from an institutional standpoint. NATO was designed to give the United States and Western Europe a collective defensive front against Soviet aggression, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe. NATO was a foil to the Soviet Warsaw Pact and existed as such predominantly throughout the Cold War. Its raison d'etre was to provide mutual defense for its member nations. "

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• Analytical Essay # 141667 : "NATO Expansion and Russia"
• Essay # 4192 : "The Clinton Administration and NATO Expansion"
• Book Review # 110885 : "Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace"

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