Wayne Merry's essay, "Therapy's End", in the Winter 2003/04 issue of The National Interest advances a controversial proposition: "The main instrument of the Cold War now inhibits rather than encourages transatlantic cooperation and should be eliminated." The National Interest has asked four distinguished scholar-practitioners to provide their opinions and responses to this argument.
Getting Real
An Unromantic Look at the NATO Alliance
John C. Hulsman
AS Alexander Pope explained, "If folly grow romantic, I must paint it." Which brings me to E. Wayne Merry's piece. I have enjoyed Merry's company for a number of years. Yet there has always been something about his aversion to NATO, more in tone than anything else, that has failed to ring true. With this piece, at last I have it. For Merry, all outward appearances to the contrary, is a romantic about the alliance, failing to see it for what it is genuinely in the process of becoming.
