The end of the Cold War called into question NATO's relevance to the new global security environment. The Alliance's aspirations for a broader future security role are packaged in a structural initiative: the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF). CJTF is designed to provide a mechanism for crisis response and peacekeeping operations conducted beyond Allied borders by variable coalitions of NATO members and associates. Also, CJTF is intended to facilitate better resource-sharing between the U.S. and the European Allies, permitting the Europeans to undertake some missions without direct U.S. involvement. Such arrangements will promote a distinct European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within the Alliance, as well as helping to satisfy the American desire to share more of the global security burden with Europe. Events in the former Yugoslavia have provided impetus for the Alliance's evolution, as well as creating a proving ground for its new initiatives. In the absence of a final agreement on CJTF, the Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia is serving as a prototype. This thesis examines the CJTF concept's historical and strategic underpinnings, surveys the current state of the CJTF debate, and illustrates how NATO's experiences in the former Yugoslavia have contributed to the Alliance's post-Cold War renaissance.

Focusing on NATO's continued crisis of identity, Joyce P. Kaufman argues that the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo have proven to be critical to an alliance that has not been able to define its roles and missions in the post-Cold War world. While, on the one hand, NATO was enlarging by inviting former adversaries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to join, on the other hand it has been woefully unprepared to deal with the ethnic conflicts that erupted on its borders and that could undermine the peace and stability of Europe. The author contends that the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia have potentially threatened the essence of NATO by forcing the alliance to take on the new role of peacekeeper without adequately allowing the members to examine the role the alliance wants to or should play in a largely postcommunist world. Despite ongoing discussion in NATO ministerial summits, the alliance has made little progress to date and public questions about the role and even the viability of NATO after the Cold War continue to grow. The inability to address these issues leaves NATO facing a number of pressing questions that this book tries to answer: What role can and should the alliance play in the future? And why have the ongoing conflicts in the Balkans proven to be a challenge that the alliance has been unwilling or unable to resolve?

This book offers a thorough appraisal of Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war to compel the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, to end his campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The author sheds light both on the operation's strengths and on its most salient weaknesses. He outlines the key highlights of the air war and examines the various factors that interacted to induce Milosevic to capitulate when he did. He then explores air power's most critical accomplishments in Operation Allied Force as well as the problems that hindered the operation both in its planning and in its execution. Finally, he assesses Operation Allied Force from a political and strategic perspective, calling attention to those issues that are likely to have the greatest bearing on future military policymaking. The book concludes that the air war, although by no means the only factor responsible for the allies' victory, certainly set the stage for Milosevic's surrender by making it clear that he had little to gain by holding out. It concludes that in the end, Operation Allied Force's most noteworthy distinction may lie in the fact that the allies prevailed despite the myriad impediments they faced.

After 40 years of Cold War, NATO found itself intervening in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan, where the ability to communicate with local people was essential to the success of the missions. This book explains how the Alliance responded to this challenge so as to ensure that the missions did not fail through lack of understanding.