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One of the principal puzzles generated by the end of the Cold War was the continued existence of NATO. Why, many asked, should the Atlantic Alliance survive when its primary justification, the Soviet threat, had disappeared? Although this question was addressed by a number of scholars in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has not gone away. In some ways, it has only intensified with NATO's expanding membership, from 16 to 28 countries, and its increased involvement in conflicts beyond its members' borders, as exemplified most recently by its leadership of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
This book thus represents a timely as well as useful contribution to the scholarly literature on NATO. It differs from most previous works on the subject, however, in at least two important respects. First, it analyzes NATO in comparative perspective, asking not only why the alliance endures but how it differs from other alliances. Second, it reminds us that the puzzle of NATO's persistence predates the end of the Cold War. Since its very first decade, the alliance has been repeatedly racked by crises that, at least at the time, seemed to threaten its very existence. Yet, on each occasion, its members were able to overcome their differences and maintain a high degree of cooperation.
Why NATO Endures offers two complementary explanations for this pattern. The first emphasizes three structural factors: the international distribution of power, the presence or absence of ideological cleavages, and the scope and pace of warfare (p. 120). Here, the argument is that after 1945, bipolarity, the East-West ideological divide, and the heightened speed and destructiveness of war made European alliances more durable, integrated, and broader in scope than their predecessors. These conditions meant that NATO members were freer to express their disagreement but were also much more...