Alliance are primarily political, underpinned not only by shared defense planning and military cooperation, but also by cooperation and consultation in economic, scientific, environmental and other relevant fields. Throughout the years of the Cold War, however, faced with the expansionist political ideology, totalitarian system of government and military capacity of the then-Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, cooperation among NATO member countries focused above all on the development and maintenance of collective defense (Edwards, 1995, pp. 184-185).
A half-century ago, at the end of World War II, the United States faced a time of great change--of enormous opportunity and uncertain peril. Americans wanted nothing more than simply to go home. But soon the United States found that freedom's wartime victory was incomplete and that the post-war period would require continuous and active American engagement to marshal the forces of freedom for a new kind of war--a cold war.
Among the challenges that Harry Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and their Democratic colleagues faced was to build a new post-war order in cooperation with a new Republican Congress. And, to the lasting benefit of the United States and the world, they met that challenge. They found allies in Congress who recalled the consequences of isolationism after World War I. They forged a bipartisan consensus based on the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the post-war institutions of the West, and sustained American leadership (Kaplan, 1994).
Now, a half-century later, the United States has the opportunity--and the responsibility--to marshal the forces of freedom for a new kind of European peace. The United States--through the United Nations--has the opportunity to work with the European partners to extend freedom's victory to all of Europe. Why is it in the national interest of the United States to continue to play an active role in the restructuring of Europe...