e the community's external relations with any other nation or group of nations. As a consequence of Europe's economic needs and its military weakness just after the Second World War, the United States was able to exert an almost imperial influence over Western Europe.2 The United States, more than any other country, is finding it exceptionally difficult to come to grips with an EC which has a mind of its own, even if it, as yet, it does always not speak with a single voice.3
The EC was formed under the protective umbrella of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the 1950s.4 It is somewhat ironic, thus, that the success of the EC leads to questions concerning the future of NATO. The world, however, is changing, and the imperatives which led to the formation of NATO are viewed differently in the early 1990s than they were in the late 1940s, when NATO was formed. Further, the interests of the
__________ 2D. P. Calleo, The Atlantic Fantasy: The US, NATO, and Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 24.
3A. Paradalis, "European Political Co Operation and the United States," Journal of Common Market Studies 25 (June 1987): 282 289.
4L. S. Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988), 73.
NATO partners no longer coincide to the same extent in the early 1990s as was true in the 1940s and 1950s (Gordon, 1981).
This European independence of the United States is often interpreted to mean that the EC constitutes a powerful third political force between the United States and the Soviet Union. At some point in the future, this interpretation may become a reality. In mid 1992, however, the EC, as a single entity, does not have the freedom to act in external relations that is required for it to perform such a role. European action in the United Nations, even when unity appears to be present, is, in fact, separate actions by separate national government...