A German chancellor openly defying the United States? Accusing George W. Bush of "adventurism" and hurling an ever louder "no" across the Atlantic--a "nein" to war against Saddam under any circumstances? During the Cold War, America's trustiest ally would not have dreamed of insurrection, not while Soviet shock troops were ensconced 25 miles outside of Hamburg, whence I write. Thereon hangs a tale that transcends yesteryear's transatlantic troubles of the "Whither NATO?" variety. It is the story of bipolarity lost--the first chapter, not the last.
The Atlantic Alliance has been dying a slow death ever since Christmas day 1991, when the Soviet Union committed suicide by dissolution. Having won the Cold War, the Alliance lost its central purpose and began to crumble like a bridge no longer in use--slowly, almost invisibly. In 1994 the departure of the last Russian troops from Central Europe signaled that the capitulation was complete. The Europeans saw their existential dependence on the United States lifted, the latter its lesser but still vital need for a European glacis.
Only one year later, as the wars of Yugoslav succession began in earnest, NATO as quasi-supranational army was already defunct, for those who fought with the United States were but a loose coalition of willing and able. The most obvious watershed was 9/11. It was not that the Europeans withheld fealty from the United States; indeed, as the Alliance invoked Article 5, numerous NATO members contributed to the American cause. The deeper message of 9/11 and the Afghan campaign was one of systemic transformation.
