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Thies's book addresses the important question of why NATO has endured, despite recent and repeated historical claims that it was on the verge of a final crisis. Clearly, not only has NATO survived innumerable crises since the 1950s, but has managed to persist well beyond the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, its raison d'être. Thies's conclusion is that alliances of democracies are far more durable than the shorter term alliances of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Thies addresses two main themes. In chapters 2 through 4, he addresses how NATO is unlike other alliances, such as SEATO, CENTO or ANZUS. SEATO and CENTO collapsed when the US sought to secure its regional influence through other means (after the Vietnam War). ANZUS and the US-Japanese alliance did not face a sufficient threat for the US to establish a formal command to co-ordinate military deployments. In chapters 5 through 7, in a series of case studies, he looks in detail at how NATO endures, which include the threat of Soviet ballistic missiles of the 1950s, the INF Treaty, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Soviet...