Chicago Summit: Showcase for a 21st Century NATO?

[Michie]

The last two decades have demonstrated that NATO’s post-Cold War death notices reprised a classic Mark Twain one-liner. When Twain learned that a New York newspaper had published his obituary, he wisecracked, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Next week’s NATO summit in Chicago gives NATO’s current leaders an opportunity to showcase the alliance as a focusing instrument for waging war and securing peace in the 21st century.

Created in 1949 and dedicated to Europe’s defense, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization served as the Free World’s primary military and political vehicle for containing the aggressive threat posed by the Soviet Union. In his 1946 post-World War II “Sinews of Peace” speech, Winston Churchill described the Cold War’s decisive military and political battle zone: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” NATO succeeded in deterring war, in all likelihood a thermonuclear war, on Europe’s central front.

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