THE NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organization is one of the most successful alliances of all time, but after the cold war and the successful completion of its mission, NATO suffered an identity crisis. It now has three main functions and self-images that compete with each other. The first persona is the enforcer, the pacifier of conflicts beyond the region's borders; the second is the gentlemen's club for liberal and liberalizing countries of the West; and the third is the residual function of an anti-Russia alliance.
One must wonder why, with the end of the cold war, NATO did not dissolve. How do we explain the organization's transformation and vitality at the end of the twentieth century? NATO did not retire after victory because it was not just any old alliance. Rather, it had become a genuine institution, complete with transnational, integrated command structures, a permanent bureaucracy, buildings, regular meetings and ceremonies, its own logo, website and so on. Institutions take on lives of their own; they have a self-preservation instinct and successful ones especially want to keep validating their importance. This is the "March of Dimes" explanation for NATO's persistence after the collapse of the Soviet threat. And though NATO's attempt to survive might be expected, its evolution over the past twenty years is in many ways a paradox. In one of its personalities it became a more muscular and combative military alliance just when it least needed to be: after accomplishing its strategic purpose. In another of its personalities, however, it stopped taking its core military mission seriously. The tensions among these three personas may be less dramatic than in the famous film The Three Faces of Eve; with luck the West might easily live with them indefinitely.
