The NATO alliance: US conventional force level options toward it based on U.S. national interests

Abstract

NATO has proven itself to be a most stable and successful organization for peace. However, the world today is far different from when the alliance was formed thirty-two years ago, and many relationships have changed. As Western Europe has developed from World War II, it has attained a large measure of economic and political stability. It has evolved into a major power center. The US, meanwhile, has seen a decline in its ability to defend its changing national interests. Therefore, the central objective of this thesis is to analyze the relationships between NATO and Western Europe and relate those findings to an assessment of current US national interests. The thesis will propose four US conventional force level options toward NATO in the 1980s and will conclude with the recommended implementation of one of the four options. The ultimate question asked by this thesis is: "Could the US better insure militarily the defensibility of its current overall national interests by redefining its current role in NATO?"