Abstract
On the evening of 9/11, a few individuals from NATO’s International Staff got together to discuss how NATO should respond to the massive attacks on the United States that had occurred just a few hours earlier. Not yet knowing the full scope of the attacks, let alone their perpetrators, the discussion quickly boiled down to one major question: should the allies invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, NATO’s collective defence commitment, thereby giving the strongest political signal of solidarity that sovereign nations can give each other? Most members of that small group supported such a decision. If this was not a clear case for the ultimate expression of transatlantic solidarity, what else was? NATO could not be seen as dithering, or else it would lose its credibility as a serious defence organization.
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Notes
For an early (pessimistic) post-9/11 assessment see François Heisbourg, ‘Europe and the Transformation of the World Order’, Paper prepared for the IISS/CEPS European Security Forum, Brussels, 5 November, 2001;
Charles Grant, ‘Does this war show that NATO no longer has a serious military role?’, The Independent, 16 October 2001.
For a more optimistic perspective see Philip H. Gordon, ‘NATO After 11 September’, Survival, Vol.43(4), Winter 2002, pp. 1–18.
For various sources see Paul E. Gallis, ‘Kosovo: Lessons Learned from Operation Allied Force, Congressional Research Service’, 19 November 1999;
John R. Schmidt, ‘Last Alliance Standing? NATO after 9/11’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol.30(1), Winter 2007, pp. 93–106.
For an overview of optimist and pessimist views about NATO’s longevity see Wallace J. Thies, Why NATO Endures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Even before 9/11 the Realist School of International Relations was predicting NATO’s drift into irrelevance, see Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Structural Realism after the Cold War’, International Security, Vol.25(1), Summer 2000, pp. 5–41.
See Richard E. Rupp, NATO after 9/11: An Alliance in Continuing Decline (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006);
Thomas L. Friedman, ‘The End Of NATO?’, New York Times, 3 February 2002;
Daniel Korski and Michael Williams, ‘The End of NATO and the Danger of US Unilateralism, RUSI Transatlantic Programme Briefing’, 8 February 2008.
See Michael Rühle, ‘NATO after Prague: Learning the Lessons of 9/11’, Parameters, Vol.33(2) Summer 2003, pp. 93–94.
And predictably sparked another wave of ‘declinist’ articles; see Ivo Daalder, ‘The End of Atlanticism’, Survival, Vol. 45(2) (Summer 2003), pp. 147–166;
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© 2013 Michael Rühle
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Rühle, M. (2013). Reflections on 9/11: A View from NATO. In: Hallams, E., Ratti, L., Zyla, B. (eds) NATO beyond 9/11. New Security Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391222_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391222_3
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