Most of the candidates approach NATO and other international organizations as if they are static organizations. NATO is not simply an organization of military powers in cooperation with one another. It arose specifically in the context of the Cold War: it organized international and national defense policies in particular ways that are not really applicable any more.

The prevailing concern during the Cold War was that the dominant threat from the USSR. However, that did not allow the nations automatically to gear themselves to defend against the USSR--Western European nations were still obliged to defend against their neighbors. NATO provided a framework by which the lower level security threats of neighboring states could be dealt with productively by coordinating the security policies of each state. The focus of defense would no only be the state next door, but the Soviet Union.

NATO had the effect of directing interstate conflict and competition away from defense policy. It would no longer be acceptable to express grievances with another state through military expansion or jingoism. The European Coal and Steel Community (later the European Economic Community, currently the European Union) were pioneering and influential in the same way: economics became a field of cooperation between states, allowing them to concentrate more on social policy. Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman should be thanked for the early successes of all these endeavors.

There have been obvious consequences of the demise of the Soviet regime: the USSR is no longer a threat; the European countries have a legacy of peace between them; states formerly under the Soviet system are eager to affirm European interstate cooperation. But in this context, the relevance of NATO was not longer obvious. Europeans would no longer fight among each other--why should they support military development? Fairly early on as the European Union was being formalized, some diplomats began pointing to a number of ethical and moral reasons why Europeans should cultivate military strength. These were the "Petersberg tasks": military power needs to be available to intervene in humanitarian crises. However, the European states were not clear about how to affirm these reasons and redesign their armies in order to meet them. First, NATO did not provide a framework for acting outside of Europe or against anything other than the army of a superpower. NATO was (and still is) poorly conceived for either current security threats or for the goals of the Petersberg tasks. Second, the creation of a European defense force has been problematized by politics. Of course, different states have had different opinions about where, when and how to intervene. More controversially, the European states have not agreed on how to build a European defense force. They may be willing to grant authority to a super-international organization like NATO, but they are uncertain about doing so for the EU. To many European, the EU has stood for peace without resort to military--a brighter future than NATO could provide. Furthering this problem is current US policy. Bush demands the formation of ad hoc coalitions to meet new threats. This undermines efforts to build an EU force. If international organizations will not be facing these threats, why should nation-states invest in these organizations--either NATO or EU. They see that they need to invest in their national defense forces, a proposition which will lead them to added expenses.

The Kosovo War showed Europeans what they wanted from defense policy and their problems in achieving it. First, they wanted to act as a humanitarian force in the world, employing diplomacy and pressure to democratize before force in order to end strife. Second, the war showed that their current regional defense organizations are poorly conceived for humanitarian tasks. The EU could not produce a force at the time to go into the Balkans (despite a military budget of over one-hundred billion dollars). The US was reluctant to allow NATO to go in (remember all those ridiculous worries about "nation-building" that ultimately crippled the state department?). The current answer for the EU has been to develop a force that can respond to humanitarian crises on short notice--what they call the Rapid Response Force (RRF.) The RRF has been slow in emerging because of the US use of ad hoc coalitions that I outline above. Also, national defense purchases by the individual states has been focused on creating a force that could act thousands of miles away (they need to figure out how to move thousands of troops and their equipment on short notice--they imagine that the RRF would be deployable in 30-60 days when fully formulated.)

What could a "new Atlantic Charter" do? It suggests that the US will be willing to cooperate with Europe in any number of defense related tasks rather than simply attempting to direct them. One, it could refocus NATO in purpose: it could maintain its elements of cooperation while providing a context for large scale operations within the world. Two, it would clarify to European nations the support of the US for a European defense policy and help them to realize the RRF. Third, it could provide guidelines for different types of interventions in global affairs, be they humanitarian or defensive.