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The Role and Growth of NATO EssayFrom Thucydides onward, moral philosophers, students of international politics, statesmen, and constitution makers bring on been indifferent and very very much troubled by the role of morality in international politics. There has often been a tendency, in the discourse on political morality and the ethical conduct of statecraft, to alternatively blow up or deprecate the influence of morality in internationalpolitics, and hence succumb to either self-righteous moralism or cynicism and skepticism. The task of moral reasoning ab give away international politics is neither a simple nary(prenominal) an casual one, and is made to a greater extent difficult when moralism is confused with morality. Moralism involves the adoption of a whiz value or article of belief and applying it indiscriminately without due imply to circumstances, while, or space. Morality, on the other hand, is the endless search for what is right in the midst of sometimes c ompeting, sometimes conflicting, and sometimes incompatible values and principles (Morgenthau 79). The normative number of political reality admonishes us to think morally, non moralistically, and non to confuse self-righteousness with morality. It reminds us that international politics are to a fault complex to resemble a morality play, and that moral choices are never easy.Yet all is non well in Europe. The end of the chilliness warfare and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union stop the high- book threat to the West. Invasion is right off implausible. However, the lacuna created by the absence of any high-intensity threat has been filled by low-intensity threats, taking the principal form of chronic imbalance in the Balkans and the outbreak of ethnic conflict stemming from the insulation of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the various Balkan wars are indicative of the occurrence that history and a particularly nasty and virulent form of nationalism persist quite stubbo rnly in that corner of Europe.The horrors and atrocities perpetrated in those wars were shocking to people who believed in Never Again and that European civilization had evolved beyond such behavior. This, of course, ought to be a sobering monitor lizard that peace and stability can never be obligaten for granted, that liberal values are not as triumphant as some would like to believe, and that Locke, Kant, and Smith might have to make agency for Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes as we are forced to reengage with history.How exactly are we to reengage with history? In the midst of peace and plenty, we have had the luxury of debating and rethinking our conceptions of certificate. Traditional state-centric notions of security, which privilege s everyplaceeignty over the rights and dignity of the individual, are called increasingly into question. They are deemed relics of the past, chassis leaves hiding the intellectual paucity of Cold fightriors un competent or unwilling to ada pt themselves to an altered security environment.We are witnessing the rise of a rival orthodoxy regarding how we think and act about security, one that is centered on human rights and human securityconsonant with our post pastal values and sensibilitiesand allegedly better suited to deal with the problems of intrastate state of war and ethnic conflict. This rival orthodoxy, we are to believe, is morally superior and more evolved than traditional notions of security. After all, what sorting of person can be against human rights and human security?On 24 work on 1999, NATO began subprogram Allied Force, an aerial bombing campaign that was to last s regular(a)ty-eight days. The Atlantic Alliance, arguably the most decent and successful politico- forces coalition in history, created originally to defend Western Europe against a Soviet onslaught, this instant went to war for human security. In the subsequent military campaign, NATO won and got what it wanted, and then some. The Al liance triumphed without a single combat casualty. Serbian military and paramilitary forces, looking remarkably unscathed despite the scope and intensity of NATO sorties, evacuated the province.A NATO-led military force moved in, and Kosovar refugees started bout backing home. Kosovo is now a de facto protectorate of NATO and the United Nations, charge if the fiction that the province remains a sovereign and integral part of Yugoslavia is maintained. Kosovars are champing at the consequence to cleanse the province ethnically of the remaining Serbian minority, even as we insist that our pick out and address is to structure a multiethnic and multicultural Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic is gone nevertheless the genie of ethnic strife is already out of the bottle, and the Balkans remain as unstable as ever (An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State March 2002).A question mark hangs over an ethic of responsibility, meanwhile, because the jury is still out as to whether we will be able to move toward such an ethic when it comes to future humanitarian interventions or whether humanitarian warfare is, as some argue, an idea whose time has come, and gone (Krauthammer 8). From the Balkans to the Caucasus, the environment remains ripe for massive and ruffianly abuses of human rights indeed opportunities to interacteven if NATO does not expand any further to the East.The temptation to intervene will be great. If CNN is present, we will have emotional and gut-wrenching scenes of human suffering beamed into our living rooms and in that respect will be a clamor to do something (Hudson and Stanier 256). And why not do something? The Alliance has already bent, if not broken international law over Kosovo. Surely it will be easier the bit time near. Furthermore, NATO now possesses a template for immaculate intervention. The Alliance will not deploy ground march but can instead rely on precision guided munitions beadped from on high, with little or no risk to its servicemen and women (Burk 5378). add-on intervention is characterized by motive and ends, the motive to do good, and the goal to put an end to human suffering. This is what is supposed to distinguish moral interventions from immoral ones (Abrams 74). It was said of the Gulf War that the West would not have come to the aid of Kuwait if that country had produced broccoli instead of oil. Kosovo have neither oil nor broccoli. Hence, we were told by President Bill Clinton that NATOs actions were intended to enable the Kosovar people to return to their homes with safety and self-government, or alternatively to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive. (Roberts 20)The Alliances objectives were thus to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo and/or to impede a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. Kosovo was to be a peeled sort of war, one fought in the name of universal values and principlesto uphold human rights and prevent a humanitar ian tragedyrather than for concentrate interests (Roberts 20). Yet motives and ends are dangerously unreliable as criteria for moral calculation and judgment. Moral judgment cannot be suspended simply because the motives are pure, the cause just, and the ends good.The decision to enlarge the Atlantic Alliance has receptiveed contestation as to whether an expanded bail will help to sustain global peace or hasten greater tension, if not localityal or global wars. International relations theorists are largely dual-lane over the question, and the relationship between hamper enlargement and the question of war or peace is undecipherable and ambiguous.Alliances in general have often been blamed as one of the study factors helping to experience the fears and suspicions leading to World War I, as well as previous wars in European history, at least since the advent of the formal multipolar balance of former system in the mid-seventeenth century. American foreign policy from George Washington to World War II traditionally eschewed entangling bonds. On the other hand, the lack of strong alliances and of soaked American commitments to Britain, France, and to key strategically positioned states such as Poland, for example, has been cited as one of the causes of World War II.following Soviet retrenchment from eastern Europe after 1989, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet state in 1991, the Atlantic Alliance has been praised as the most successful alliance in history. Without NATO, it is argued, the peace of Europe could not have been secured by means ofout the Cold War. Detractors, however, have argued that NATOs formation in 1949 led to the counterformation of the 1950 Sino-Soviet allianceand indirectly to the Korean Warin addition to the establishment of the Warsaw Pact following West Germanys admission to NATO in 1955.These contrasting perspectives do not clarify the relationship between alliances and war in todays geostrategic circumstances. The ques tion remains as to whether German mating, followed by Soviet implosion, and now by NATO enlargement into east- primeval Europe, will assure stabilizing. The Alliance has opted to extend its membership to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary inwardly the former Soviet sphere of influence, raising some fears of a new partition of Europe.At the very(prenominal) time, NATO has promised to consider further enlarging its membership it has advocated what has been deemed an open NATOin part to prevent a possible new partition between members and nonmembers. Alliance pronouncements promised that romishia and Slovenia would be granted first consideration in a second round, in addition to one or more of the Baltic states. Indeed, NATO has not left out the disaster of Russian membership, but has only taken limited steps in this direction (Kegley and Raymond 275277).Despite the fact that NATO is one of the most institutionalized alliances ever created, with decades of experience in fost ering close ties among its members, the United States chose not to use NATO to organize its response to the attacks. NATO was unable to provide a control condition structureor even substantial capabilitiesthat would override U.S. concerns about using the NATO machinery. European contributions were incorporated on a bilateral basis, but NATO as an organization remained limited to conducting patrols over the United States and deploying ships to the eastern Mediterranean.This U.S. policy choice did not admiration many in the United States. Many U.S. policymakers believed that NATOs war in Kosovo was an unacceptable example of war by committee, where political interference from the alliances 19 members prevented a quick and decisive campaign. The policymakers were determined to retain sole eclipse authority in Afghanistan, so that experience would not be repeated (Daalder and Gordon).The deployment of the NATO AWACS demonstrates this point. The United States did not want to deploy th e NATO AWACS directly to Afghanistan, because it did not want to involve the North Atlantic Council in any command decisions. Instead, the NATO AWACS backfilled U.S. assets so the assets could redeploy to Afghanistan. A military official later described the U.S. decision in these name If you were the US, would you want 18 other nations watering down your military planning? (Fiorenza 22)However, many Europeans were dissatisfied with the smooth role that the alliance played in the response to the September 11 attacks and attributed it to U.S. unilateralism and arrogance. While they understood the indigence to ensure effective command and control, they felt that they had given the United States unconditional political support finished the invocation of Article 5 and that they should at least be consulted about the direction of the military campaign. In part, these frustrations resulted from the fact that the military campaign did not fit the model all had come to expect during the C old War that an invocation of Article 5 would lead the alliance members to join together and defeat a common enemy (Kitfield). But these frustrations also reflected a fear that the U.S. decision to pursue the war on its own after invoking Article 5 would irrevocably weaken the core alliance principle of incarnate defense.To uncover a possible answer to the question as to whether an extended NATO alliance will prove stabilizing, I seek to explicate the views of international relations theorist, George Liska. Even though he was well cognize in the 1960s for his classic definition of alliances, Liskas later comparative geohistorical perspective of the 1970s and mid-eighties has often been overlooked or not fully appreciated (Kegley). Although generally pessimistic, Liska argues that major power or systemic war is not inevitable and can be averted, yet only given a long-term strategy of cooptation of potential rivals into the interstate system.For Liska, alliances are neither inheren tly stabilizing or destabilizing. manage armaments, they do not in themselves cause war, but they can set the preconditions for generalized conflict depending on the manner and circumstances in which they are formed and depending on which specific states are included. Moreover, the expansion of an alliance formation is less likely to provoke major power war when the predominant states of a particular historical period are either overtly or soundlessly included. Generalized wars, however, are more likely to occur when the predominant powers cannot participate in the key decision-making processes that affect their perceived vital interests, and thus cannot formulate truly concerted policies.Global conflict has largely stemmed from the apparently recurrent failures of the major contending states to shape long-term entente, or full-fledged alliance, relationships. Since 1991 the world has seen a new opportunities, but the weight of the millennian past continues to burden the present ( Liska 17). Although the U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance against Germany, 19411945, collapsed after World War II, the superpowers were by contrast able to maintain a general state of peace, though not without intense regional conflicts often fought through surrogates.The ensuing struggle for control of former German spheres of influence, the quarantine of East Germany and other Soviet-bloc states, the formation of NATO, Soviet/Russian fears of a U.S./NATO alliance with the flanking states of Japan and the Peoples Republic of China, collectively resemble the 477 to 461 B.C. point of Athenian-Spartan relations, following the breakdown of their alignment against Persia. Throughout the Cold War, Washington and capital of the Russian Federation sustained a tacit multidimensional reprise containment of Germany and Japan, as well as other significant regional powers, including China, that helped to prevent open conflict between them. Yet it is precisely the Soviet/Russian role in this multid imensional double containment that has virtually disappeared following German unification (Gardner 7-9).The collapse of the Soviet Empire and its spheres of security parallel the instability that confronted Sparta. Continuing fears of national uprisings and Russian disaggregation, coupled with recurrent wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, recall the threats posed by the Helot revolution and the Third Messenian War. The United States and NATO now bid for control over former Soviet and Russian spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe much as Athens penetrated Spartas sphere in the Aegean and then the Ionian seas.Disputes over power and burden sharing within NATO, considered together with differences over the financing of the 1990 Persian Gulf war and the conduct wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, are evocative of Athenian efforts to sustain preeminence over its Delian league allies, regardless of the diminished Persian threat. Moreover, Pericles decision to forge a new defensive alliance with the insular power bears similarities to NATOs decision to extend its alliance with Western Europe into Central Europe, a change depicted as defensive, involving no nuclear weapons or additional troops to be deployed on the territory of new NATO members (Gardner 2026).Most crucially, should the United States and Russia not be able to reach a compromise over the question of the modalities of NATO enlargement into East-Central Europe, the 2 powers risk losing their tacit post-World War II alliance against Germany and Japan altogether. This would parallel the Athenian decision to drop entirely its deteriorating ties with Sparta after the new Athenian democratic leadership expelled Cimon.Moreover, American proposals to build a ballistic missile defense in possible violation of the ABM treaty could be interpreted by Russia in much the same way that Sparta interpreted the Athenian decision to build defensive walls around the city of Athens. In a word, the Uni ted States is presently poised either to renew its relations with Moscow or else let them sour to an even greater extent, thus risking another round of mutual imprecations that could overleap into a wider conflict.Turning to another episode involving an essentially bipolar land/sea schism, namely the coppice between capital of Italy and Carthage over spheres of influence in Spain, Sicily, and the Mediterranean, raises additional questions about Soviet collapse and NATO enlargement. frequently as the Peloponnesian wars can be viewed as a result of the breakdown of the Athenian-Spartan wartime alliance, the First punic War can likewise be interpreted as a product of the termination of the 279278 B.C. Roman-Carthaginian wartime alliance against Tarentum and Pyrrhus of Epirus.The alliance between Rome and Carthage followed the classic Pyrrhic victory at Ausculum that opened Sicily up to classic conquest. The deterioration of that alliance was provoked by the Roman decision to assist the Mamertines against Syracuse in 264 B.C. and to take Messana under Roman protection. This unexpected action led Carthage to support Syracuse in response. This in turn represented a reversal in alliances equally unanticipated by Rome, as Carthage and Syracuse had traditionally been enemies (Harris 187).Carthage subsequently accused Rome of a violation of its previous transcriptions, which, concedeing to Carthaginian sources, forbade the Romans to mystify into Sicily and the Carthaginians to cross into Roman spheres. In fact, Rome and Carthage did sign three treaties in 510509, 348, and 306 B.C., designed to sustain Carthagian spheres of influence over Western Sicily, Sardinia, Libya, and the Iberian peninsula, but there was no agreement addressing specifically the changing status of a divided Sicily. The 510509 B.C. treaty, signed in the year that marks the formation of the Roman Republic, sought to affirm Roman agreement to abide by the historically positive relations between Carthage and Etrusca. In the 306 B.C. treaty, Rome vowed not to cross the Straits of Messina in exchange for a Carthagian concession to permit Rome full freedom of maneuver in the Italian peninsula.Moreover, even if there was no formal treaty in 279278 B.C., there may have been a tacit understanding involving a vague mutual recognition of single military and commercial spheres of influence that was at least proposed during the 279278 B.C. wartime alliance against Pyrrhus (Eckstein 79).Whether a formal treaty actually existed is really secondary to the point that Carthage at least operated under the assumption that some type of accord existed in order to justify its previous alliance relationship, and it jealously guarded Western Sicily as the central strategic keystone to its insular defense. On the other hand, Roman expansion to Calabria diminished the size of the cushion region between the two states. As an expanding continental power seeking amphibious status, Rome began to regard the Carthagian presence on Sicily as a potential encirclement. Carthage was regarded as threatening Romes marine trade from ports on the Ionian Sea and in the Gulf of Tarante.The charge that a tacit agreement was violated is not unlike the debate between the United States and Russia, as to whether Washington affirmed abruptly in 19891990 that it would not extend NATO into East-Central Europe. Moscow has argued that the decision to enlarge NATO into what it has considered its central strategic region of continental defense contravenes the spirit of the two plus four treaty on German unification not to permit NATO forces into the territory of the former East Germany, as well as the gentlemans agreement made between George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 against NATO expansion.As a rising land power seeking amphibious status, Rome expanded into Calabria and thereby diminished the historic buffer between Etrucsa/Rome and Carthage, a power in relative decline. In contemporary geopolitics, NATO enlargement into former Soviet and historic Russian spheres of influence similarly risks undermining the post-1945 security buffer between the United States and its German ally and a Russia now in a state of near absolute collapse.Works CitedAbrams, Elliott. To Fight the Good Fight. discipline Interest 59 (spring 2000) 74.Burk, James. 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