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The key to strategic stability in the post - cold war Europe is the consolidation of complementary dynamics of regional integration and transatlantic cooperation, the latter centered on the Atlantic Alliance and the former on the European Union.
They both reflect the firm determination to preserve the "separate peace" of Western democracies, which made it possible to restore an undivided, free Europe, as well as the transatlantic community's solidary concern in ensuring its collective defence while striving at the same time for international peace and stability.
As a founder-member of the Atlantic Alliance Portugal has profited from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's strategic guarantee and ever since 1974, with the institutionalisation of democratic plurarism that paved the way to its membership of the European Communities, it has been able to fully assume its obligations as an ally and recover its European vocation.
Since the end of the cold war Portugal has supported a strategy of strengthening of the community and multilateral institutions which is essential to confine uncertainties and reduce the fragmentation risks inherent in the extraordinary changes that successively...