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NATO as a political alliance: continuities and legacies in the enlargement debates of the 1990s

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Abstract

NATO’s ongoing relevance as a political alliance appeared time and again in the debates of the 1990s, as the Western allies struggled to adapt their old institutions to the challenges of a new world, one without the Cold War. This article explores continuities in allied thinking pointing to concerns and considerations that remained no less relevant with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the splintering of the Warsaw Pact, and the unraveling of the Soviet Union. It focuses on the popular notion that NATO represented a political alliance, not merely a military one, showing how Canadian policymakers advocated for NATO enlargement on the basis of the Atlantic alliance’s political credentials. In so doing, this article suggests new avenues to examine and reevaluate the process of NATO enlargement by incorporating the perspectives—and increasingly available archival records—of often neglected members of the alliance.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Joshua Shifrinson, James Goldgeier, and all of my fellow participants in the Pardee School of Global Studies’ workshop, ‘Evaluating the Legacy of NATO Enlargement,’ for their comments and suggestions, as well as Simon Miles and the anonymous reviewers at International Politics. This piece would not have been possible without the hard work of many at Library and Archives Canada, particularly the analysts reviewing Access to Information requests.

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  1. International Security Studies, Yale University, 31 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Susan Colbourn

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Colbourn, S. NATO as a political alliance: continuities and legacies in the enlargement debates of the 1990s. Int Polit 57, 491–508 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-020-00226-8

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