From the Publisher
The formation of NATO represented a turning point in the history of both the United States and the other Atlantic powers. For the first time in peacetime, America had engaged in a permanent alliance linking it to Western Europe both in a military and in a political sense. NATO: Its Past, Present, and Future tells the complete story of this historic alliance, from its shaky beginnings through its triumphs and failures to its current new groupings of nations.
Peter Duignan’s concise yet comprehensive history reveals how the founding of NATO had some unintended consequences, such as the weakening of the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain and the development of one with West Germany. Duignan charts the ongoing conflicts between the allies over détente and their respective contributions to the alliance. He chronicles the organization’s pivotal role during the cold war years, showing how NATO deterred the Soviet Union from blackmailing or "Finlandizing" Western European countries, how it reconciled the Allies with Germany, and how it kept the United States involved in Europe as a peacekeeper. He details the reorganization of NATO in the 1990s and its cooperative arrangements with former Warsaw Pact members, examining the development of the new post–cold war European-American relationship. And he looks at NATO’s present-day challenges—its controversial involvement in Yugoslavia, the clash with Russia over Kosovo, and the de facto partitioning of Kosovo. The conclusion charts the changing roles and problems of the organization as we enter the twenty-first century, especially the transformation of NATO from a defensive organization into a war-making body against an independent nation over an internal matter.
As NATO celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the world remains a dangerous place. NATO: Its Past, Present, and Future represents a fitting tribute to this historic cooperative alliance of nations and its changing mission.
Peter J. Duignan is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has authored, edited, or coauthored more than forty books on Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. His most recent publications (with Lewis Gann) include The Rebirth of the West: The Americanization of the Democratic World, World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War, and in 1998 Contemporary Europe and the Atlantic Alliance.
About the Author
Peter J. Duignan is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has authored, edited, or coauthored more than forty books on Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. His most recent publications (with Lewis Gann) include The Rebirth of the West: The Americanization of the Democratic World, World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War, and in 1998 Contemporary Europe and the Atlantic Alliance.
