Earl C. Ravenal

The end of Hitler's New Order in Europe in May 1945 ushered in a new order in America's relationship to Europe. The arrangements that were designed, debated and put in place during the following four years endure to this day. They are part of the world into which the present generation of foreign policy practitioners and commentators were professionally and intellectually born; and they shape the perceptions and limit the imagination of the general public. NATO, in particular, is a fixture in the international political and strategic firmament. The present Atlantic relationship is not without flaws, but since its framework has the aspect of a given, critiques fix on surface phenomena and proximate factors--apparent weaknesses or apparent strengths. Improvements are considered within the given framework, not as alternatives to it. Even the flaws are felt as mere irritants, inspiring only enraged political opposition or petulant geopolitical daydreams.

Characteristic of American foreign policy since World War II has been the quest for a certain minimum of world order and a practical maximum of American control. Successive schemes for the regulation of power-collective security, bipolar confrontation, and now perhaps the balance of power-have differed in their objects and style. But interventionism-structuring the external political-military environment and determining the behavior of other nations, whether in collaboration, conflict or contention with them- has been the main underlying dimension of our policy. There has been no serious substantive challenge to this premise since the eve of our entry into World War II. The last "great debate," in 1951, over the dispatch of American troops to Europe, was about implementation and constitutional procedure.