Waging Modern War - The Future of the Atlantic Alliance (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1,0 (A), Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Centre for European Studies), course: America, Europe and the World in the 20th Century, language: English, abstract: Having been a soldier of the SFOR Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia and Hercegovina I could witness and experience the role, which the United States play not only militarily in Europe. During the Kosovo campaign this engagement reached a new magnitude, probably unprecedented since the Second World War. Yet, the German Foreign Minster JOSCHKA FISCHER attested in his famous speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin that decisions of historical importance turned the faith of Europe in favor of its peoples: First, the reasoned inference of the United States and not to withdraw from the continent. And second, the courage of the main actors and former aggressors on the continent to reconcile their interests, and hence to begin a process of integration1.

The commitment of the United States in Europe supported the process of the European integration. Yet, the Europe Union proves to be a successful experiment, culminating in these days in the introduction of the EUR-currency. Though traditional representatives of the nation-state abandoned voluntarily some of the core characteristics of elementary sovereignty, the European Union develops on the side of the U.S. slowly towards a new dominion of world politics and power. In the field of foreign and security policy the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provided above all the ground for common measures in and around the periphery of both actors. The so far best example in this regard is publicly considered concerning the Gulf war in 1991. Though, NATO did hardly play a significant role, the Alliance sell its engagement there as a great success2.

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1 Fischer (2000).
2 NATO (1998), p. 70.