NATO 1949-2009 Politique étrangère : Vol. 74, No. 4, Winter 2009, English edition
A little more than 60 years after its creation, questions about the future of the Alliance emerge at the intersection of three observations. First, the complexity of the world,which makes the Alliance ‘inevitable,' since it is a rare source of stability and solidarity in a world marked by uncertainty. Second, American doubt. If the United States was the global policeman for some simple minds [...] at the start of the 1990s, others see the US as having used up its power in the adventurism of the Bush Administration. The future will wipe out these two caricatures. For members of the Alliance, the US will long continue to be a necessary friend, whose power and possible abandonment are feared. [...] The third observation is, obviously, Europe's incurable ethnocentricity: If Europeans knew how to look at the world and their place in it, they would rapidly give up their mediocre powerlessness. [...] History is moving on elsewhere, and raises questions on its chaotic path to which others are replying more quickly. In the years ahead, therefore, the Alliance may lorge ahead without Europe or nearly without it, despite the fact that Europeans' specific know-how could be useful.