CIAO DATE: 12/99

Atlantic Security: Contending Visions

edited by Charles A. Kupchan

Council on Foreign Relations Press

November 1998

 

A product of the Study Group W. Averell Harriman Study Group on Transatlantic Relations (http://www.foreignrelations.org/public/resource.cgi?proj!136), April 1, 1996-September 1, 1996; directed by Charles A. Kupchan

93 pp.; ISBN: 0-87609-235-0 $15.95 [Paper]

Where is the transatlantic security relationship headed? What key assumption should inform efforts to preserve it? Although policymakers have embarked on ambitious plans to enlarge NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, a guiding vision for fashioning an Atlantic alliance for the next century has yet to emerge.

This volume advances efforts to forge such guiding vision by juxtaposing three essays grounded in competing theoretical traditions. Stephen Walt’s realist approach suggests that the Atlantic democracies have no choice but to accept a weaker and less cohesive alliance. Ole Waever’s constructivist perspective points to the process of European integration as the key to Atlantic Security. Charles Kupchan’s liberal account focuses on how to preserve the Atlantic alliance as a community of democracies among which war has become essentially unthinkable.