The U.S. has, relatively, declined in power. This is not a matter of quasi mystical deterioration, as in "the decline and fall of the Roman Empire," but a matter of simple relative proportion. In the late 1940s the U.S. had essentially the world's only intact industrial economy. As America's allies (and other countries, including the Soviet Union) rebuilt from virtually nothing, their relative industrial power necessarily grew more rapidly, with the added advantage that their rebuilt factories and facilities were newer and therefore more modern than the already existing American infrastructure.
Thus, by the 1980s, NATO was more nearly an alliance of equals than it had been in the 1950s. The quasi unification of Europe, scheduled for 1992, will make NATO, if NATO survives, even more an alliance of equals. It might be argued, indeed, that the increasing strength of Western Europe makes continued U.S. participation in European security unnecessary and therefore makes NATO obsolete, regardless of the course of events in the
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