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alternatives, as the primary security organization in Europe.
183
The failure of such leading
international theories to account for the NATO/ESDI debate challenges scholars to study this
historic competition for NATO’s post-Cold War survival in order to advance our understanding
of alliances in theory and practice. The development of existing theories to account for state
behavior in the case of the NATO/ESDI debate remains to be done, but is beyond the scope of
this paper.
In the meantime, this research demonstrates that NATO’s survival was not assured, but
had to overcome a strong diplomatic challenge to create an exclusively European alternative.
There have always been disagreements within NATO, but what has made the alliance so
successful is that the allies have always resolved them and moved forward together. Alliance
cohesion is not the absence of tension; it is the constant shepherding of powerful national
interests into a common purpose.
At a time of great international upheaval, the members of NATO did not choose to
balance against the strongest world power, the United States. Instead, they preserved the
transatlantic link that is NATO because they continued to see the valuable contribution it made
to their national interests and European security. Bush acknowledged that the pivotal decisions
made at the dawning of the post-Cold War era would challenge long held assumptions about
alliances and European security. He stressed the point, “the Rome Summit is a landmark event.
For here we took decisive steps in transforming the Atlantic alliance. In so doing we
demonstrated that NATO does not require a Soviet enemy to hold it together.”
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183
Although France and others have continued to advocate for an independent ESDI, the unanimous vote at the
Rome Summit was significant because it acknowledged NATO’s primacy for the immediate future. In fact, the
supporters of an ESDI probably viewed the preservation of NATO at the Rome Summit as a short-term concession
while they developed an ESDI to eventually replace it. Subsequent events have shown that their efforts have not
been successful, whereas NATO has preserved its role as the primary security organization in Europe. World
history would have been quite different had the supporters of an ESDI opposed Bush’s challenge at the Rome
Summit. An official split at the NAC would have torn NATO apart and unleashed tremendous pressure for Bush to
fulfill his challenge and withdraw U.S. forces from Europe. It would have left Europe dangerously vulnerable
without a transatlantic link, while it wrestled with the Balkan crises and the ever elusive task of developing more
than an embryonic European security organization. These substantive implications lie outside the scope of this
research.
184
“News Conference: President George Bush at the NATO Summit Conference, Rome, Italy,” Federal News
Service, (November 8, 1991).
Convention