This book analyses the evolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its policies from the Cold War until today. NATO’s future cannot be fully understood without analysing its past: the origins of its structure and goals, and their transformation over time. By exploring NATO’s geopolitical and military role at crucial points throughout history, this edited volume considers the challenges and threats which have faced the alliance, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. It covers highly-debated and unresolved issues such as budgetary burden-sharing and the military transatlantic gap, the enlargement process, and the role of Asia in influencing NATO’s policies. Combining a historical approach with international perspectives, this book is an interdisciplinary read that will appeal to scholars of diplomatic history and international relations. Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The emergence of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the last two-thirds of the 1990s and continuing into the new century, has been a complex process intertwining politics, economics, national cultures, and numerous institutions. This book provides an essential background for understanding how security issues as between NATO and the European Union are being posed for the early part of the 21st century, including the new circumstances following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This study should be of interest to those interested in the evolution of U.S.-European relations, especially in, but not limited to, the security field; the development of institutional relationships; and key choices that lie ahead in regard to these critical arrangements.

Following the passage of the fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries of the entry of many former communist states into both NATO and the EU in 2019, this book takes a comprehensive look at the changed security conditions of these new member states. How has NATO and EU membership improved their overall defence protection, and what elements are still missing for them on an individual state basis? Utilising alliance politics theory, convergence/divergence theory and defence policy theory, the book provides an invaluable assessment of defence policies, from the stable East Central European states to the most jeopardised Baltic states in the north of Europe. With chapters on the Cold War defence conditions during the last two decades of Soviet domination, post 1989–91 transformations in the direction of democracy and the impact of the 2014 Ukraine–Russia–Crimea crisis, this book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the changed landscape of European politics in the twenty-first century.

Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War.

This timely volume assesses NATO's current accomplishments, continuing challenges, and potential pitfalls. Leading international scholars and policymakers explore three key themes influencing NATO's future: transatlantic relations, the debate over enlargement, and the organization's new functions. Weighing the fate of an alliance poised for renewal or decline, the contributors offer informed analysis and discussion of an organization that has changed profoundly over the past five years and continues to evolve in the face of an uncertain global environment.