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Defending Europe in the 1990s
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15148 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1989 |
1,959 Words |
| Author
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Rudy Boschwitz
Rudy Boschwitz is a Republican senator from Minnesota. He
serves on the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European
Affairs. |
"Europe's shores are our shores. Europe's borders are our
borders. We will stand with [the Europeans] in defense of
our heritage of liberty and dignity."
--President Reagan
On April 4, 1949, when the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty, our country for the first time formally committed itself in peacetime to come to the military aid of Western Europe--an act unthinkable even a mere decade before. We had learned that our country could not risk dissociating itself from Western Europe if we were to protect our own freedom. This key reason behind NATO's creation has been a cornerstone of policy guiding every postwar administration.
As we celebrate NATO's 40th anniversary and begin a new administration here at home, it appears to be a particularly apt time to examine whether the alliance continues to be the best guardian of freedom for the West and, if so, how it should develop strategies to meet the new challenges we will face in the 1990s.
NATO continues to fulfill a vital and, for the foreseeable future, an irreplaceable mission. Indeed, the new Soviet leader and the new Soviet "thinking" present at least as great--and certainly a more subtle--challenge to the West as when the Soviets appeared more overtly menacing. Our success in dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev will depend largely on our ability to meet his challenge in a unified way. NATO provides the framework for that unity; its abandonment would leave each country in the alliance to
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