THE FUTURE OF TRANSATLANTIC SECURITY RELATIONS

COLLOQUIUM REPORT

Edited by

Richard A. Chilcoat

Joseph R. Cerami

Patrick B. Baetjer

Sponsored by

U.S. Army’s Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Series

U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute

The European Union Center for Excellence at Texas A&M 

University

The George Bush Presidential Library Foundation

The George Bush School of Government and Public Service

September 2006

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ISBN 1-58487-258-6
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CONTENTS

Foreword by Dean Richard A. Chilcoat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Letter from President George H. W. Bush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Panel 1: Force Structure and Power Projection 

for the Region and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Panel 2: Overview of Trends, Themes, and Grand Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Luncheon Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Panel 3: Homeland Security and Terrorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Panel 4: Realigning American Forces in Europe: 

Demise or Rebirth of the Atlantic Alliance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Keynote Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Closing Remarks by Dean Richard A. Chilcoat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Conference Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

The Atlantic Alliance and Blair’s Pivotal Power: 

Trying to Make All Things Special . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Alan P. Dobson

How to Avoid a Transatlantic Rift over Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Guillaume Parmentier

Dark Winter/Atlantic Storm:

Key Issues from Two Executive Level Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Randall J. Larsen

Atlantic Storm: Facing the Bioterror Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Daniel S. Hamilton and Bradley T. Smith

American Realignment in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Johan Lembke
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Turkey, Russia, and Sticky Institutions: 

Why the Transatlantic Security Relationship Endures—

and Some Thoughts on Future Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Patrick B. Baetjer

Participant Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Sponsor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
v

FOREWORD

The George Bush School of Government and Public Service, 

the European Center of Excellence at Texas A&M University, the 

George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, the Department of 

the Army’s Eisenhower National Security Series, and the U.S. Army 

War College’s Strategic Studies Institute were proud to sponsor the 

Future of Transatlantic Security Relations Conference held at the 

Bush Presidential Conference Center in College Station, Texas, on 

March 8, 2006. A number of scholars from all over the United States 

and Europe came great distances to participate in the discussions 

and seminars. We appreciated their efforts, and I believe we have 

captured their remarks and ideas faithfully within this conference 

report.

The Transatlantic Security Relationship has been an anchor of 

European and U.S. foreign policy since the closing days of World 

War II. As the conflict drew to a close, a new one rose from its ashes. 

The Cold War and its many harrowing moments reinforced, time 

and again, the importance of maintaining close ties and mutual 

understanding across the ocean—a distance that has grown ever 

smaller in this age of globalization.

The purpose of the conference was to examine the future of this 

storied alliance. There were three key objectives. First, we aimed to 

raise the national security community’s awareness and understanding of U.S. and European security relations. Our second goal was 

education—our efforts sought to contribute to the knowledge of 

U.S.-European security affairs for faculty and university students 

from across the Southwestern United States. The last goal was to 

contribute to current research and publications on U.S.-European 

affairs by drawing attention to the security challenges the United 

States currently faces and will face in the near-term future. Our 

panel discussions, debates, and keynote speeches strove to clarify 

key conceptual questions, examined current areas of cooperation 

and conflict, and reviewed defense, foreign, and homeland security 

policy and strategy, as well as military force transformation issues.

While the multitude of challenges that confront the United 

States and Europe cannot be solved in one day, our efforts, we 
vi

believe, contributed substantively to the ongoing discussion about 

the future of the transatlantic relationship in academia and the 

policy community. We thank all of our guests, our national security 

experts, our Bush School and A&M faculty and students, and the 

distinguished members of the A&M community who joined with 

us on March 8. Their efforts to address these critical national and 

international security issues were Herculean, and this conference 

report strives to encapsulate their many concerns, thoughts, and 

remarks.

Richard A. Chilcoat

Dean 
LETTER FROM PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH

Dear Friends,

I am proud that we hosted “The Future of Transatlantic Security 

Relations Conference” at Texas A&M University, and I am confident 

that you will find this conference report quite valuable. A number 

of important viewpoints and ideas were exchanged throughout the 

day at the Annenberg Conference Center.

More than 10 years ago, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft and 

I recorded the ideas, insights, and events that informed the foreign 

policy decisions made during my Presidency. We bore witness to 

truly incredible events, events that inspired the title of our book, 

A World Transformed. Indeed, we wrote, “In a sense, these years 

concluded nearly three-quarters of a century of upheaval, the tides 

of totalitarianism, world wars, and nuclear standoff. . . . Paralyzing 

suspicion had given way to growing trust; confrontation to 

collaboration.” In many ways, no relationship during my Presidency 

proved more important than the cooperative efforts between the 

United States, Europe, and Russia during and after the fall of the 

Berlin Wall.

Fortunately, despite our differences, I believe that we have 

resisted those who would cast aside the years of cooperation to 

embark along solitary paths. Fifteen years after we all witnessed 

truly historic events, this conference afforded us the opportunity to 

assess the past, present, and future of U.S.-European relations.

I greatly appreciated the efforts of our conference planning 

team, including Texas A&M University’s European Union Center of 

Excellence, the Bush Presidential Library Foundation, and the Bush 

School of Government and Public Service. Let me also thank the U.S. 

Army’s Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Series and the U.S. 

Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute for their generous 

sponsorship for this event.

Sincerely,

George H. W. Bush

INTRODUCTION

As former President George H. W. Bush pointed out in the 

preceding letter,

In many ways, no relationship during my Presidency proved more 

important than the cooperative efforts between the United States, Europe, 

and Russia during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fortunately, I 

believe that despite our differences, we have resisted those who would 

cast aside the years of cooperation to embark along solitary paths. Fifteen 

years after we all witnessed truly historic events, this conference afforded 

us the opportunity to assess the past, present, and future of U.S.-European 

relations.

The conference participants’ presentations focused on four main 

questions regarding the future of transatlantic relations: What is the 

current status of the Atlantic Alliance, and how will long-standing 

relationships among the United States, Europe, and Russia change 

in the near term? How will relations between Turkey, the European 

Union (EU), the United States, and the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO) evolve? Why has NATO and the transatlantic 

partnership endured and will it continue to do so? and What are 

NATO’s future roles and missions?

Short answers to these complex questions include the following 

observations that are addressed in more detail in this conference 

report. First, relations with Russia will depend largely on whether 

Russia views the enlargement of the EU and NATO as a threat. 

Second, while the status of its application is still pending, U.S. and 

European relations with Turkey will, of course, depend heavily on 

whether it is admitted to the EU in full member status. Third, NATO 

has endured largely because, as an international institution, it has 

deep and enduring value as illustrated in the concept of “stickiness,” 

which is addressed in this report’s concluding section. Finally, NATO 

will play a variety of new roles and missions, but it will never again 

resemble its original design as a Cold War conventional warfighting 

organization. 

PANEL 1: FORCE STRUCTURE AND POWER PROJECTION 

FOR THE REGION AND BEYOND

Defense Transformation: Impact on Transatlantic Relations

Repositioning U.S. Forces: Strategic and Operational Dimensions

European Views: The Impact of Transformation and Repositioning 

on Europe, NATO, and Regional Security.

Chair: Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Bush School of Government and Public 

Service, Texas A&M University

Members:

Colonel William J. Gallagher, Commanding General’s Initiative 

Group, U.S. Army, Europe and 7th Army

Dr. Alan P. Dobson, Director, Institute for Transatlantic European 

and American Studies, The University of Dundee, Scotland

Dr. Jay Lockenour, Department of History, Temple University

Summary of Colonel Gallagher’s main points. To begin, Colonel 

Gallagher referred to the remarks made by U.S. Secretary of Defense 

Donald Rumsfeld at the 42nd Conference on Security Policy in 

Munich on February 3-5, 2006. He stressed that the goal of many 

Islamic terrorists is the establishment of a caliphate that would stretch 

across many borders. This transnational threat, therefore, requires 

a collective transnational response, which is why the United States 

relies heavily on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 

the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

Beyond terrorism, Colonel Gallagher pointed to several security 

issues where cooperation between the United States and Europe is 

vital. Overall, he stated that the Balkans was a NATO success story, 

and that the alliance may grow, with Croatia and Macedonia now 

eligible for membership. In Eurasia, he pointed to the Ukraine as 

an important regional ally and stressed the importance of continued 

European Union (EU)-U.S. support for the country. In the South 
Caucuses, Georgia is emerging as a significant ally, even sending 

troops to support the coalition in Iraq. With regard to Russia, Colonel 

Gallagher suggested that military-to-military relations were quite 

good, with the U.S. and Russian militaries having recently completed 

14 cooperative exercises, with an additional 13 being planned. 

In Africa, however, there are a number of problems that require 

greater EU-U.S. cooperation. The continent is subject to extreme 

poverty, harsh climates, extremism, and ethnic conflict. Colonel 

Gallagher saw one of the most important goals in West Africa as being 

the professionalization of those countries’ militaries, making them 

subordinate to civilian leadership and not partisan, ethnicity-driven 

forces. In central Africa, there remains much work to be done. He 

pointed to Operation ENDURING FREEDOM TRANS-SAHARA as 

an ongoing effort to eliminate the ungoverned areas where criminal 

and terrorist elements might try to take root.

Colonel Gallagher’s focus then shifted to the transformation of the 

U.S. military in Europe. He explained that transformation refers to 

the efforts to make the U.S. military more modular, flexible, and lethal 

for use in both humanitarian operations and conventional war. Some 

asked why the U.S. military even is needed in Europe. He asserted 

that there are operational and strategic reasons. Operationally, 

Europe has good infrastructure and is geographically closer to many 

of the regions that the U.S. military operates in. Therefore, Europe 

remains an important power projection platform for U.S. forces. 

Second, and more important, coalitions are the best way to combat 

today’s conventional and terror threats. The interaction of the U.S. 

and European militaries on the continent plants the seeds for future 

coalitions. They have established means of interaction. Gallagher 

did mention, however, that the United States would like to increase 

the interoperability between its forces and Europe’s.

Colonel Gallagher pointed out that Secretary Rumsfeld’s program 

to achieve this defense transformation has included sending U.S. 

heavy equipment home and shrinking the U.S. footprint in Germany, 

while seeking basing rights south of the Alps and in the Black Sea 

region. The idea is to have a less heavy permanent force structure, 

with only a modularized airborne unit in Italy and a Strykerequipped maneuver brigade in Germany. As currently planned, 

units will rotate every 6 months out of the United States and into 
the Black Sea region for training purposes. The impact on European 

regional security is significant; the unit rotational approach reduces 

the capability gap between allies, allows NATO more command and 

control over NATO forces, and makes available more U.S. units for 

redeployment or rotation missions.

In closing, Colonel Gallagher mentioned the importance of the 

training that the United States provides to the Eastern European 

officer corps. He stated that the young U.S. noncommissioned officers 

are vital to the effectiveness of the U.S. military. Furthermore, he 

commented on the improving relationship between the United States 

and Germany. The reason is three-fold: a shared threat in Iran; the 

change in political leadership with the election of Angela Merkel; 

and the U.S. commitment to reduce its footprint in Germany.

Summary of comments by Dr. Dobson. Dr. Dobson began by 

reiterating his belief that a special relationship exists between the 

United States and Great Britain. He then suggested that there is a 

sense of some sort of challenge to this relationship. Simply stated, the 

question is: With the end of the Cold War, what is the purpose or the 

raison d’etre of the relationship? Dr. Dobson suggested that perhaps 

the alliance had always been more than a simple, realist arrangement 

with overlapping values. He then discounted the notion that the 

relationship consisted merely of geopolitical concerns blended with 

overlapping values, pointing to disparities between the United States 

and the UK. The gap in gross domestic product (GDP) between the 

two continues to grow, there is a massive difference in the military 

capabilities of each, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had 

slighted the British by suggesting that their troops were not needed 

in Iraq.

So what underpins the U.S.-UK relationship? Dr. Dobson pointed 

out that such questions are not new. Realist concerns and overlapping 

values are not the answer. The strains on the relationship brought on 

by the Suez Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis did reveal, however, 

that narrower national interests can trump the alliance. In addition, 

Dr. Dobson suggested that values can change dramatically, but are 

impotent if the political will to act on them does not exist. In short, 

the relationship between the United States and the UK has been 

close since the 1930s. Dr. Dobson asserted that British foreign policy 
has stressed the twin goals both of being able to act on its own and 

being interoperable with U.S. forces. Intelligence has been one area 

of ongoing cooperation; for example, an American representative 

sits on the British Joint Intelligence Committee. This arrangement 

would be difficult to disentangle even if both sides wanted to.

Dr. Dobson then highlighted a number of other areas of cooperation. In 2004, the United States agreed to allow the UK to purchase 

newer nuclear delivery systems. The UK gets early warning of a 

nuclear strike via radar and signals intelligence-gathering facilities 

that are shared readily with the United States. The Royal Air Force 

and the U.S. Air Force train together regularly on an informal basis. 

Dr. Dobson cautioned, however, that the current relationship cannot 

be maintained in its present form over time if the British continue to 

be portrayed as a “poodle” to the United States. He acknowledged 

that the Bermuda Mutual Airspace Agreement was an unfettered 

victory for British interests, but that there has to be more equitable 

compromises between the two nations if the special relationship is 

to continue to mean anything. His view is that France has proven to 

be a big threat to British/EU collaboration with the United States, 

in that the French would like to establish an independent European 

security force capable of acting without assistance from the United 

States. 

Dr. Dobson then focused on NATO. The United States and the 

UK seem to want NATO to be the dominant European security force 

with an out-of-area capability. Europeans are shouldering more of 

the NATO burden as evidenced by the commitments in Afghanistan, 

but the United States would like to exercise more influence at the EU 

table. The administration of George W. Bush, Dr. Dobson asserts, 

has made wielding such influence more difficult by declaring its 

right to act unilaterally, promulgating a doctrine of preventative 

war, and declaring the existence of universal values. British Prime 

Minister Tony Blair is being pressured heavily to keep NATO at 

the forefront of European security force discussions, although, 

Dr. Dobson pointed out, Blair launched the Common Foreign and 

Defense Policy (CFDP) in 1998 with French Prime Minister Chirac 

and appeared to have a very different view at that time. Since 2002, 

the United States has supported a NATO rapid-reaction force in an 
attempt to undermine calls for an independent European reaction 

force. Dr. Dobson acknowledged that out-of-area NATO operations 

are increasing, and suggested that the United States values NATO 

for helping to combat terrorism and protect strategic regions.

Dr. Dobson stated that the tensions in the U.S./UK/European 

relationship are not new, and that the underlying interests are 

themselves not new. There has been some progress with the firm 

anchoring of many of the former Soviet satellites into the EU and/or 

NATO and the fact that NATO invoked NATO’s Article 5 for the 

first time following the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11). Overall, 

cooperation between the British and the United States is vital in order 

to moderate France’s vision of the CFDP. Realism and neoliberalism 

provide little illumination for a path forward. A pragmatic, ad hoc 

approach between the United States, UK, and Europe is necessary.

Summary of Dr. Lockenour’s main points. Dr. Lockenour reflected 

that there has been an overwhelming number of people who have 

thought about the future, come to conclusions, and been completely 

wrong. History, he maintained, is not a predictive discipline. Each 

generation has thought that it lived in a particularly challenging time 

or unique time. Given the tendency to see current events as uniquely 

difficult, predicting the future thus becomes more dangerous or 

uncertain.

Dr. Lockenour stated that though history is not predictive, there 

are a number of continuities that can be traced from the past to today. 

For instance, politics is still a vital component of the transatlantic 

relationship, although politics can change dramatically. In Germany, 

the Christian Democrats historically have been comfortable with a 

close relationship with the United States. The election of Christian 

Democrat leader, Angela Merkel, and her subsequent comments, 

suggest that Germany will seek a more amicable relationship with 

the United States than was pursued by Gerhard Schröder.

With regard to force transformation, Germans have seen this 

taking place since 1990 with the gradual integration of the East 

and West German militaries. Germans remain concerned that the 

army could one day be a threat to democracy, a deep psychological 

hangover from World Wars I and II, and thus have preferred a form 

of democratic leadership within the military. Universal military 

service is seen as an additional measure that restrains the military.
10

Having cautioned the audience on the utility and effectiveness of 

making predictions, Dr. Lockenour outlined the broad themes that 

he believed would define the transatlantic relationship in the future. 

First, NATO has been and will continue searching for a role in the 

post-Cold War world. Second, the stationing of thousands of U.S. 

troops in Europe and Germany produced a special relationship, a 

bond that will continue into the future.

Questions.

Question: Unknown speaker asked Colonel Gallagher to describe 

in greater detail the U.S. plans for the Black Sea Region.

Answer: Colonel Gallagher responded that the troops deployed in 

the Black Sea region could be either active or reserve troops, and that 

Romania and Bulgaria were likely candidates for hosting the troops. 

The deployed force will be a brigade in size, meaning that the U.S. 

European Command will have three brigades, or 25,000 troops, at any 

given time. The United States will be moving away from regionally 

based forces, and move to expeditionary forces modeled on the 82nd 

Airborne support of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

Comment: Mr. Klaus-Peter Gottwald, the Deputy Chief of Mission 

for the German Embassy in Washington, DC, stated that there has 

been conflict within Germany over what area will be chosen to station 

the Strykers and which area will see a decline in the presence of U.S. 

troops. He pointed out that, while Germany opposed the invasion of 

Iraq, it allowed the United States to utilize the bases in Germany to 

support its operations. Mr. Gottwald disagreed with Dr. Lockenour’s 

suggestion that the Social Democrats were less welcoming to the 

United States than the Christian Democrats.

Question: Ms. Oya Dursun, Ph.D. candidate from Texas 

University: Could the panel address the political implications of 

redeployment of U.S. forces?

Answer: Dr. Alan Dobson replied that at the heart of the issue is 

the concern that European and U.S. security issues are not the same. 

The second problem is that the European militaries cannot keep pace 

with the technological advancements of the U.S. military and have 

interoperability issues. European civilians are not willing to make 
11

the sacrifices necessary to boost European warmaking capabilities 

and interoperability. The British have tried to open up the acquisition 

process in order to drive costs down through competition, but they 

have been only marginally successful.

Question: Dr. Michael Brenner suggested that the creation of 

the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) was aimed at giving 

Europeans greater influence in joint operations.

Answer: Dr. Lockenour acknowledged Dr. Brenner’s point, but 

suggested that the ERRF and the European Security and Defense 

Policy are flawed fundamentally because the Europeans cannot 

speak with one voice on issues of defense and security.

Dr. Dobson added that the Bush administration’s 2002 National 

Security Strategy Statement declaring the right of the United States to 

engage in preemptive war deeply worries Europeans.

Colonel Gallagher expressed considerable reservations about the 

creation of a ERRF. He suggested that the creation of multiple armies 

for multiple missions would decrease NATO’s capabilities.

13

PANEL 2: OVERVIEW OF TRENDS, 

THEMES, AND GRAND STRATEGY

Understanding Emerging Trends and Themes 

in Transatlantic Relations: A U.S. View

Understanding Emerging Trends and Themes 

in Transatlantic Relations: A European View

Grand Strategies: Converging and Diverging Forces, 

and the Opportunities for Building Consensus.

Chair: Dr. Michael Desch, The Bush School of Government and 

Public Service, Texas A&M University.

Members: 

Dean James B. Steinberg, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public 

Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Guillaume Parmentier, French Center on the United States 

(CFE), Institut Français, Des Relations Internationales (IFRI), 

France

Dr. Christopher Layne, The Bush School of Government and 

Public Service, Texas A&M University

Summary of Dean Steinberg’s remarks. Dean Steinberg acknowledged that scholars on the first panel looked at the long history 

of the transatlantic relationship throughout the Cold War and 

declared that he would focus primarily on the last 5 1/2 years. He 

suggested that there are two schools of thought regarding the future 

of the transatlantic relationship. One sees the various disagreements 

between Europe and the United States as a passing consequence of 

the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. The other maintains that a fundamental rift between the 

United States and Europe opened up, one that would have developed 

eventually, no matter what.
14

Dr. Steinberg stated that there appeared to be elements of truth 

within each, but that the disagreements were fuelled by decisions 

made and language used by the Bush administration. In recent 

months, however, the administration has improved in this area. 

The problem, he maintained, was that Bush campaigned on a 

traditional foreign policy agenda and emphasized the importance 

of the traditional U.S. alliances, suggesting that the transatlantic 

relationship would remain an important alliance. Yet, following the 

9/11 attacks, the United States failed to take a global approach and 

did not reach out for a global consensus, a global strategy, on how to 

fight terrorism.

In the post-9/11 world, the United States exhibited a different 

threat perception than its European counterparts and followed 

different responses as well. Dean Steinberg asserted that the 

encounter between U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and 

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on February 8, 2003, at the 

NATO Munich conference, was one of the most troubling moments 

in the history of the transatlantic relationship. He stated, however, 

that some rapprochement had occurred, with Rumsfeld giving a 

relatively conciliatory speech sometime after the incident.

So are we back to the good old days? Dean Steinberg concluded 

that the Bush administration now sees the value of allies, backing the 

EU’s negotiations with Iran (actually conducted by the so-called EU3 

group of Great Britain, Germany, and France), supporting European 

efforts in Lebanon, Ukraine, and Russia, and backing European 

measures to combat terrorism.

The difficulty remains that the United States and Europe do not 

have a sense of a compelling need for cooperation, thus even the 

smallest differences tend to divide them. For example, when the 

arms embargo against China was nearly lifted, there was virtually 

no cooperation between Europe and the United States on how to 

address the matter. Dean Steinberg acknowledged that Javier Solana, 

the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security 

Policy (CFSP), has tried to marry European and American security 

interests once more.

Summary of Dr. Parmentier’s main points. Dr. Parmentier critiqued 

the current state of the transatlantic relationship. After 2003, he 

suggested that realism made a comeback. The United States realized 
15

that it needed allies in Europe, and Europeans realized that a 

divided Atlantic made for a divided Europe. Both the United States 

and Europe recognize the importance of the United Nations (UN), 

particularly given shared concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

There are, however, deep differences. Europe and the United 

States see the founding moment of U.S.-European security 

relations today though entirely different lenses. For Europe, the 

founding moment was November 11, 1989, when nearly 200 years 

of European conflict came to an end. No longer was history to be 

driven by the expansionist goals of whichever European nation was 

in its ascendancy at the time. Threats were no longer to a nation’s 

territorial integrity; they were much more complicated. But for the 

United States, the founding moment was September 11, 2001. Dr. 

Parmentier asserted that the United States saw history as progressing 

in the wrong direction as it believed it had become less secure.

Furthermore, he suggested that Europeans do not believe in 

many U.S. justifications for intervention in the Middle East. In sum, 

Europeans do not believe in a greater Middle East, and though the 

United States and European views converged on Iran, their diagnoses 

are much different. To Europe, Iran’s nuclear dabbling is a regional 

problem. To the United States, it is a regime problem, suggesting a 

whole different set of responses. Dr. Parmentier asserted that Europe 

sees little use in isolating the Iranian regime, arguing that in Cuba, 

such isolation just reinforced the regime. Ironically, the rest of the 

world sees the United States and Europe as one and the same, that 

is, as countries that try to dictate the behavior of the Third World.

It is imperative, he stated, for the United States and Europe to 

work together. The United States should “empower” Europe not 

only because the two entities face the same problems, but because 

Europe will be involved more deeply in solving the problems. Yet 

the requisite institutions for such an empowerment are missing. Dr. 

Parmentier declared that NATO is stuck in the Cold War mentality, 

and that the political and military sides keep trying to do the other’s 

job. With regard to NATO as a vehicle of empowerment, the United 

States has been less than enthusiastic, in effect rejecting assistance 

when Article 5 was invoked for the first time on September 12, 2001. 

The difficulty is that the United States believes that the mission 
16

should define the coalition, whereas Europe prefers permanent 

alliances. To bridge this gap, he argued, NATO should see its role 

as a coalition-enabling organization, bringing together the United 

States and European nations on issues they agree on. NATO should 

not seek a role that it cannot fill—for instance, Dr. Parmentier is 

against the use of NATO in Darfur, Sudan. Finally, he argued that 

a new European-U.S. institution should be created in order to foster 

cooperation to face today’s challenges. This cooperation would be 

helped, Parmentier asserted, if the leadership void he sees on both 

sides of the Atlantic were filled. 

Summary of Dr. Layne’s main points. Dr. Layne resurrected Dean 

Steinberg’s opinion that there are two prevailing views of the 

transatlantic alliance, one that the United States and Europe have 

muddled through their differences, and the other that they are 

drifting apart. He stated that he believed the latter to be the case.

The reason for the U.S.-European divergence, in Dr. Layne’s view, 

is not Iraq or a lack of shared values, but rather that the international 

system has changed with huge consequences. Fundamentally, he 

argued, the United States and Europe do not need one another like 

they once did. There is a far greater incentive for the Europeans to try 

to counterbalance American hegemony than to remain close allies.

The traditional view is that the United States has been an offshore 

counterbalance to anyone who sought hegemony over Europe. If that 

is still the case, then it makes little sense for U.S. troops to remain 

in Europe. Dr. Layne argued that the Soviet Union was never the 

driving force behind the U.S. presence in Europe. Rather, the United 

States wanted to impose its hegemony on the European continent. 

Former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson made this clear when 

he explained that the U.S. presence was meant to “keep the United 

States on top, keep the Germans down, keep the Europeans from 

killing each other, and to prevent the Europeans from uniting 

and forming a third way.” Acheson also suggested that economic 

concerns were behind the U.S. footprint as well.

Dr. Layne pointed out that Europe had tried to resist, as seen by 

Britain’s behavior over the last 50 years, as well as France’s behavior. 

French President Charles de Gaulle built a nuclear arsenal despite 

American opposition and resisted the 1963 Test Ban Treaty.
17

In the future, Dr. Layne hypothesized, some subset of European 

countries will build their own military. The discussions about a 

European Rapid Reaction Force and the Common Security and 

Defense Policy are a harbinger of future events. The Europeans have 

not forgotten that they were incapable of dealing with the Kosovo 

crisis without the U.S. military. In the final analysis, NATO is an 

instrument of U.S. hegemony. The United States should return to its 

traditional role as offshore counterbalance to any who would seek to 

assert hegemony over Europe.

Questions.

Comments: Panelists asked permission from the chair to respond 

to Dr. Layne.

Dr. Alan Dobson questioned whether the United States is actually 

a hegemon, as well as Dr. Layne’s assertion that the U.S. stationed 

troops in Europe only to impose its hegemony. Dean Steinberg agreed 

with Dr. Dobson, suggesting that perhaps a small cadre within the 

Bush administration was pushing for U.S. hegemony, but that the 

American public was against it.

Dr. Parmentier dubbed Dr. Layne’s views as “Gaullist.” He 

asserted that hegemony requires both the ability and desire to “be on 

top,” and that the United States has shown itself to be the reluctant 

dominant power. Dr. Parmentier expressed concern that the French 

left would fashion conspiracy theories out of Dr. Layne’s views.

Dr. Layne addressed Dean Steinberg’s comments by asserting 

that there is a huge difference between the U.S. foreign policy elite 

and public opinion. Furthermore, he was confident that recently 

declassified documents confirm that the United States made heading 

off peer competitors a policy during the Cold War.

Question: The panel was asked several questions at once in the 

interests of time. Colonel Bass asked about Europe’s demographic 

trends, which indicate a rapidly aging population and few young 

workers to support the social welfare system. Mr. Rad van den 

Akker, from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division at 

NATO headquarters, asked how Europe could integrate Ukraine 

without angering Russia. Dr. Michael Brenner inquired as to what 
18

the practical implications of democracy promotion were for Europe. 

Mike Abshire suggested that Europe was not monolithic in all of 

its views, and asked panel members whether or not they believed 

that Europe’s views on Iran were mistaken. Dr. Plamen Pantev, the 

Director of the Institute for Security and International Studies in 

Bulgaria, inquired as to how the United States and Europe could 

overcome their different security outlooks. Mr. Gottwald queried 

the panel on how the North Atlantic community would deal with 

the issue of nuclear weapons in the future, suggesting that the global 

community had moved from nonproliferation to a “nuclear limited 

license privilege.” 

Answer: Dean Steinberg replied that with regard to Ukraine, the 

United States would risk alienating Russia in order to consolidate 

the gains made in the country. This would be relatively easy for the 

United States and would come at little cost. The question remains, 

however, as to how Europe and Russia view the expansion of the 

EU. It remains unclear how threatened Russia feels by EU expansion, 

and whether or not there is much enthusiasm for continued EU 

expansion at the moment. Democratization, he argued, has been 

met with skepticism in Europe and in the United States. His sense 

was that both publics were starting to turn against the idea that the 

spread of democracy should be a U.S. foreign policy objective. Dean 

Steinberg predicted that the U.S. Congress would seek some sort of 

third way between strict adherence to nonproliferation as U.S. policy 

and the nuclear license, as described by Mr. Gottwald. He stressed 

that it was imperative for there be a strong domestic debate about 

these issues in the United States.

Answer: Dr. Parmentier acknowledged that Europe’s demographics were troubling and that Europe is not monolithic in its 

views. He returned to his empowerment theme, asserting that 

the United States must not be or be seen as antagonistic towards 

European military involvement in joint operations or areas of 

mutual interest. He suggested that the United States does not like 

long overseas deployments, and that in future operations the United 

States would take the lead and then turn it over to Europe, which has 

demonstrated a greater willingness to wait things out. Vital to such an 

arrangement, however, is greater planning on the part of the United 

States. Democracy promotion is problematic. He asked rhetorically 
19

what means would be used for such a campaign. Dr. Parmentier 

asserted that one could either use force, which he indicated was 

unlikely to be successful, or one could use an information campaign 

similar to what was used during the Cold War. He declared that such 

a campaign would be something both the United States and Europe 

could agree upon. Lastly, he addressed the unspoken question of 

whether Europe was “breaking apart.” In his view, it was not drifting 

apart but had just pushed too hard, too quickly to integrate such a 

large number of states. It will take Europe years to be a real actor 

on the world stage, but consolidation is necessary in order to be a 

credible partner.

21

LUNCHEON ADDRESS

Summary.

Major General Robert Ivany (USA-Ret.) shared a personal 

account of traveling to Hungary in November 1990 to oversee the 

democratization of the nation’s armed forces. The assignment had 

added significance as the general’s parents had fled from Hungary 

in 1945 to escape the advance of Soviet troops. He pointed out that 

the Hungarians expressed their desire to turn their military into one 

that resembled the U.S. military. They had given extensive thought 

to the philosophical reasons for having an army and had produced 

a white paper that sought to compare Hungary’s situation to that of 

Switzerland, or NATO countries, in order to gain insight as to the 

correct path to follow. The Hungarian officers told General Ivany 

that they wanted to join NATO—a prospect that seemed quite a 

ways away to him. Yet 4 or 5 years later, Hungary had become a 

NATO member that contributes substantially today, even assisting 

the United States as a member of the coalition in Iraq. General Ivany 

concluded that transformation of society can happen far sooner 

than expected if the populace embraces it and if the government 

seizes upon that desire. In the case of Hungary, the Western style 

of government appealed strongly to its citizens, bringing about 

monumental change very quickly.

23

PANEL 3. HOMELAND SECURITY AND TERRORISM

The Atlantic Storm Exercise: Learning Lessons

Homeland Security: U.S. and European Views.

Members:

Dr. David McIntyre, The Bush School of Government and Public 

Service, TAMU

Colonel Randall J. Larsen, USAF (Retired), Director of the Institute 

of Homeland Security, Washington, DC.

Mr. Klaus-Peter Gottwald, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of 

Germany, Washington, DC

Dr. Daniel Hamilton, Center for Transatlantic Relations, the Paul 

H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns 

Hopkins University

Summary of exchanges between Dr. McIntyre, Colonel Larsen, Mr. 

Gottwald, and Dr. Hamilton. Colonel Larsen began the third panel 

by asserting that the outbreak of pandemic flu is more likely in the 

next 10 years than a biological terrorist attack. He had developed 

a simulation entitled “Dark Winter” which simulated a smallpox 

attack on three U.S. cities. Prominent former government officials 

played leading roles at the relevant agencies. The decisionmakers 

quickly realized that they did not even know the right questions to 

ask in such a situation. Larsen declared that the 21st century will be 

known as the century of biology. Pathogens are not simply local, 

state, or even national problems—they are indeed global. Countries 

cannot seal the borders from pathogens. Were pandemic flu to break 

out, economic activity would virtually cease. The disturbing fact is 

that a terrorist could purchase the equipment on the Internet needed 

to manufacture such an organism with as little as $50,000.

Dr. Hamilton explained that they had taken the “Dark Winter” 

simulation one step further by creating the simulation “Atlantic 

Storm,” which envisioned the pandemic flu crossing the Atlantic to 

Europe. In this simulation, former officials from the United States 

and various European countries played the roles of heads of state 
24

and heads of relevant organizations. The idea was to expand the 

strategic challenges so as to embrace the international community. 

Dr. Hamilton observed that participants were not sure if there had 

actually been an attack, and they quickly discovered that there 

were only 700 million doses of the smallpox vaccine. Debates over 

how to prioritize dosage allocations among countries paralyzed the 

participants.

Mr. Gottwald, a player in the simulation, remarked that 

leadership proved vital, and that the problem could not be dealt 

with simplistically. Dr. Hamilton commented that there was no 

mechanism for sharing the vaccine, and that the only time Article 5 

of the UN Charter had been invoked was after the 9/11 attacks, in 

response to a security issue within the United States. It was not clear 

that invoking Article 5 in the simulation would have any meaningful 

effect. Participants asked whether NATO was the right organization 

through which to handle the crisis, and disagreements broke out 

over whether diluting the vaccine to make more doses available was 

feasible. Dr. Hamilton discussed the advantages and perils of “ring” 

vaccinations, meaning vaccinating everyone ringing the outbreak 

site, versus mass vaccination. 

The panelists remarked that biodeterrence, the concept that 

a would-be attacker is limited in what biological agent he can use 

because he wants to survive the attack, may be in jeopardy, given 

the willingness of various terror groups to commit suicide. The 

simulations revealed that one nation’s weak points become weak 

points for its neighbors. Thus questions remain about how a nation 

can actually “protect” itself from a biological agent. The panel 

concluded that the United States and Europe needed to reorient 

themselves to face new threats, and that advanced, integrated 

planning was desperately needed.
25

PANEL 4: REALIGNING AMERICAN FORCES IN EUROPE: 

DEMISE OR REBIRTH OF THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE?

Comparative Views from the United States and Europe: 

Opportunities and Obstacles

Is Consensus Possible? 

Members:

Dr. Johan Lembke, Director, EU Center of Excellence and the 

Bush School of Government and Public Service, TAMU

Dr. Michael Brenner, Graduate School of Public and International 

Affairs, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Plamen Pantev, Director, Institute for Security and International Studies, Sofia, Bulgaria

Mr. Rad van den Akker, Political Affairs and Security Policy

Division, NATO

Ms. Oya Dursun, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government, 

the University of Texas at Austin

Summary of Dr. Lembke’s Statements. Dr. Lembke framed the 

discussion by stating that the U.S. realignment with Eastern European 

countries is advantageous to the United States in that it offers 

attractive basing closer to areas of operation, it reaffirms the U.S. 

commitment to its newer allies, and it enables the United States to 

provide training to the host countries’ militaries. It was therefore no 

surprise that much of the “Coalition of the Willing” was comprised 

of Eastern European countries where the United States either had a 

military presence or was seeking one.

Summary of Mr. Akker’s main points. Mr. Akker declared that 

the realignment issue was dead at NATO. The organization saw 

realignment as a given, logical step that fit well into both the 

United States and NATO’s modernization plans. Furthermore, he 

acknowledged that commitment to a country was no longer defined 

by the presence of troops on its soil. The year 2003 was an obvious 

low point in the alliance with the dispute over the Iraq War, but he 
26

believes that NATO has rebounded strongly and that it remains a 

sound framework for addressing mutual concerns. The rebound was 

assisted by the fact that President Bush went before the EU and NATO 

after the Iraq invasion, a sign which was taken as rapprochement in 

Europe.

Europe and the United States face a number of serious challenges, 

ranging from terrorism and crime to disease and an aging population. 

Mr. Akker affirmed that the United States and Europe could not 

return to their Cold War relationship but needed to engage in a new 

dialogue. While the EU has a role, NATO should be the key forum 

for adapting old frameworks. NATO has and will be involved in 

stabilization missions, but it cannot be just a troop provider, it must 

be involved on the political side as well. Mr. Akker suggested that 

NATO would be a good place to hold a dialogue on the problems 

and future of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Mr. Akker pointed out that 19 of 26 NATO countries also are 

members of the EU. Yet NATO is necessary in order to keep a strategic 

partnership that eliminates needless competition among European 

states. This is not to say that the transatlantic dialogue should move 

solely to the EU. Both the EU and NATO should be utilized. Two 

important features that set NATO apart from the EU are that it has 

the capacity to respond militarily to a problem if need be, and that 

the United States sits at the NATO table as a full member, whereas 

it certainly does not at the EU. Mr. Akker readily agreed that the 

dialogue between NATO countries and the United States needs 

strengthening. 

Mr. Akker asserted that NATO’s Riga Meeting on April 27-

28, 2006, would prove to be an important event. The operations in 

Kosovo and Afghanistan would be analyzed and reassessed, NATO 

force transformation would be addressed, to what extent NATO 

would pursue out-of-area roles would be discussed, and methods for 

bringing the ANZUS countries and Japan into the alliance would be 

examined. He stressed that NATO’s commitment to both a military 

and a political platform had to be clearer.

Summary of Dr. Brenner’s main points. Dr. Brenner reminded the 

conference attendees that military alliances historically have endured 

as long as a threat existed. In the case of the transatlantic alliance, 

some unraveling surely was expected. And yet the relationship, he 
27

declared, had survived in a fairly robust form. Dr. Brenner stated 

that the United States and Europe are bound together by much 

more than narrow realist theory interests. The two share values as 

well as forms of social organization. Despite these shared features, 

they have not translated to agreement on new missions and security 

issues. Geography and power projection capabilities led Europe and 

the United States to come to very different conclusions about threats 

like terrorism and failed states. The Kosovo mission exhibited unity 

of consent and mission as a humanitarian intervention, but observers 

quickly forgot that NATO could not agree that the Balkans were a 

core mission. The assumption that Kosovo laid the foundations for 

future operations proved wrong.

Dr. Brenner asserted that the United States and Europe held 

conflicting views as to the nature of the alliance. It is not, in his 

view, a conflict over the relative capabilities of Europe as compared 

to those of the United States. He cited Britain as an example of a 

European nation with a fairly robust military capability. Instead, 

it is a crisis of small differences in values and viewpoints. The 

United States promulgated a preventative war doctrine that Europe 

is uncomfortable with. The United States has proclaimed that the 

security of the West is dependent on the global spread of democracy, 

a belief that is alien to European political elites.

The role of morality in foreign policy is another example of a 

difference in values. In the United States, morality and a sense of 

mission are intertwined intimately in foreign policy. The United 

States views the world as a series of problems to be fixed over time 

with American ingenuity. Europeans do not see the world in such 

a manner, and the European sense of identity is not imbued with a 

sense of mission. They do not believe that the world will eventually 

emulate the United States. Dr. Brenner declared that Europe is 

haunted by its history.

Summary of Dr. Pantev’s main points. Dr. Pantev viewed the 

U.S. basing in the Black Sea region as a complement to EU/NATO 

enlargement and did not see it as a contradiction or an abandonment 

of the alliance. This was the first time that Bulgaria had the freedom 

to decide its foreign policy objectives and could think strategically 

on its own. The bases would allow for greater U.S. involvement in 

the region.
28

Exchange. Dr. Brenner argued that the U.S. bases had political 

meaning and that Europe needed to undergo political and 

psychological changes in order to develop the will to act. He 

suggested that European willpower was lacking perhaps because 

the region had been protected under the American shield for so long. 

He commented that the ERRF and CSDP were being built employing 

a “Hindu sense of time.”

Dr. Lembke declared that U.S. bases in the Black Sea region would 

have multiple positive consequences, including stronger transatlantic relations, securing European and U.S. energy resources, a 

counter influence to China and Russia, the strengthening of NATO’s 

southern wing, and a likely increase in foreign direct investment 

(FDI) in the region.

Dr. Pantev commented that the national perception in Bulgaria 

is that the country wanted to participate in the war on terror, and 

that it can provide the United States with geopolitical assistance. 

Furthermore, Bulgaria has considered the dangers of taking an active 

role, but it believes it will be a target regardless of whether it acts or 

not. Bulgaria has the willpower that Western Europe lacks. In terms 

of security issues, Dr. Pantev explained that Bulgaria is a player 

for a number of reasons. The western Black Sea coast is becoming 

increasingly significant, having seen a number of problems including 

the trafficking of people, drugs, and arms. There is a strong suspicion 

that terrorists use the region as a transit point or seek to purchase 

weapons there. With regard to energy security, three major projects 

traverse Bulgarian territory—the Nabucco, Berganz, and Ambo 

pipelines.

Summary of Ms. Dursun’s main points. Ms. Dursun focused on 

Turkey’s role in NATO and in the EU. Turkey is one of three longtime NATO members that are not in the EU. Ms. Dursun asserted 

that Turkey is concerned that it will be abandoned by the European 

Common Security and Defense policy, remarking that admittance to 

the EU would allay these fears.

The EU would benefit in several ways from admitting Turkey. As 

a secular state with a Muslim identity, Turkey exerts considerable 

influence in the Middle East and in the “Stans.” It would prove to be 

a good mediator for European efforts to bring an end to the Israeli/
29

Palestinian conflict—Turkey wields a great deal of soft power, 

according to Dursun.

In terms of hard power, Turkey would prove beneficial to the 

EU should it seek to intervene in an area where there is a substantial 

Muslim population, because Turks bring a greater awareness of 

cultural sensitivity as Muslims.

Dursun envisioned Turkey entering the EU as a “privileged 

partner” but not as a full member. Failure to admit Turkey to the 

EU in some significant way would prove to be a “deathkiss” for the 

transatlantic relationship. It also would seem to confirm Samuel 

Huntington’s theory of a clash of civilizations between the West and 

the Muslim world. She encouraged the United States and Europe to 

avoid forcing Turkey to choose between the two.

Questions.

Question: What should be done regarding a constitution for the 

EU?

Answer: Dr. Michael Brenner suggested extracting the best 

parts of the defunct constitution and consolidating them in a new 

document.

Question: What are the other panelists’ views on Turkey’s chances 

of admittance to the EU, and would a U.S. observer at the EU solve 

some of the problems mentioned earlier?

Answer: Dr. Plantev feared that the EU might unravel if it got 

bogged down in exceptional negotiations over Turkey’s admittance 

to the EU. For this reason, he believed that Turkey was unlikely to 

be offered privileged partner status. In regard to a U.S. observer, Dr. 

Pantev stated that it would not resolve the differences between the 

United States and the EU.

31

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Text of Dr. Josef Joffe’s Remarks, “The Future of Transatlantic 

Security Relations.”

“Whither the Alliance?“ This is not a fresh question. Back in the 

earlier days, it had spawned a major industry on either side of the 

Atlantic. My generation made quite a nice living with papers and 

articles whose titles did not begin with the words “Gender, Race, 

and Class” but rather with “Two Continents Adrift,” or with “What 

Future for NATO?” Trouble was our business, and a thriving one to 

boot.

Even earlier, in the 1960s when NATO was just a teenager, Henry 

Kissinger wrote a bestseller called The Troubled Partnership. Robert 

Osgood of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International 

Studies wrote a classic called Entangling Alliance. Their epigones went 

on to write lots of books with “end of the alliance” in their titles, with 

or without a question mark. All that was decades ago, but, lo and 

behold, we have gathered here today to address this question once 

more: Does the Alliance Have a Future?

The message of this excursion into ancient history is the amazing—

nay, unbelievable—durability of this longest-lived compact among 

free nations. Today, the Atlantic Alliance is 57 years old; there has 

never been anything like it in the history of the nation-state. Not only 

is this strange animal still around; it keeps expanding. When it was 

born in 1949, it encompassed ten European and two North American 

nations. Three years later, Greece and Turkey joined. In 1955, it was 

West Germany. In 1982, Spain became a member. In 1999, the Czech 

Republic, Hungary, and Poland—three former enemies—pitched 

in. Two years ago, the biggest batch of newcomers arrived. These 

seven countries were Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, 

Slovakia, and Slovenia. NATO now has 26 members.

Nor is this all. Since the 1990s, the Alliance has acquired a second 

layer, the Partnership for Peace, which consists of 20 countries 

ranging from Albania to Uzbekistan. Russia and Ukraine, tied to 

NATO by special bilateral councils, form the third layer. So NATO 
32

now stretches literally around the world: from the East Coast of the 

United States across the Atlantic, then all the way across Eurasia to 

the Western Pacific, and thence to San Francisco and Vancouver.

Why do I bore you with these dates and details? To do so is 

hardly jejune or pedantic. The purpose is to stress the original point, 

which is not only the longevity but also the vitality of this astounding 

institution. 

Let me make the same point in yet another way. The persistence 

of NATO can hardly be explained by the absence of crisis; it was 

never like in the fairy tale where the parties always “lived happily 

ever after.” In fact, NATO is more like a polygamous marriage that 

persists in spite of its myriad crises. At the latest, the Atlantic Alliance 

should have died a long time ago, sometime after Christmas Day 

1991. Why then? Because on that day, the Soviet Union committed 

suicide by self-dissolution, thus robbing NATO of its reason for 

being. History and theory tell us that alliances die when they win—

when the common foe which gave birth to them and kept them in 

harness disappears. Yet here we are 15 years later, and NATO is not 

only around, but bigger than ever. 

Let me elaborate. The most important point is this: The history of 

the Alliance is the history of its crises. Start with 1956 when America’s 

oldest allies, Britain and France, invaded Egypt and were forced out 

and humiliated by the Eisenhower administration. Yet they did not 

bolt but stayed in. In the same year, the Eisenhower administration 

proclaimed the “New Look,” i.e., a strategy that would substitute 

tactical nuclear weapons for conventional manpower. This was the 

“bigger bang for the buck” doctrine, and it turned West Germany, 

the eastern-most member of NATO, into the foreordained victim of 

nuclear war; it would be devastated first and foremost. Yet Bonn did 

not slink off into neutrality.

In the mid-1960s, the Johnson administration scuttled the 

Multilateral Force (MLF), a fleet of nuclear-armed surface ships, 

which was to give NATO’s non-nuclear members a finger on the 

trigger. This left a number of European governments, which had 

gone to bat for the MLF, high and dry, but none of them absconded.

In the late 1970s, the Carter administration pulled a similar stunt. 

First, it pressed the European allies to accept neutron bombs on their 

soil. Their governments had to fight a horrifying battle against their 
33

anti-nuclear foes, only to wake up one fine day to learn that Jimmy 

Carter had ditched the deployment. And so it went. In the 1980s, 

millions of people demonstrated against the deployment of Pershing 

II and cruise missiles, the West German government fell under the 

assault, and yet the West Europeans did allow those missiles to be 

deployed on their soil. 

Then, again at the latest, NATO should have crumbled during 

the Second Iraq War of 2003, when only the British truly supported 

the American war effort, while France and Germany did their worst 

to torpedo it. But here we are in 2006, and NATO is still around.

The moral of this tale is that there must have been a very powerful 

glue to keep the alliance together in spite of all these nasty crises. And 

that glue must have been strong enough to withstand the mightiest 

alliance killer of them all—victory in war, though it was only a Cold 

War. 

So why didn’t the Alliance die its historically foreordained death 

after the demise of the Soviet Union, whose existence had been 

NATO’s very reason for being? This is such a powerful paradox 

because an iron law of history tells us that alliances always break up 

after victory. Here are some examples. 

• The all-European alliance that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo 

in 1815 was dead by 1822, 7 years later, when the Brits went 

back to their old game of splendid isolation. 

• The World War I alliance that vanquished Imperial Germany 

in 1918 was defunct 1 year later, when the United States 

absconded. 

• By 1922, 4 years after the Great War, the British took a bow, 

returning to their century-old game of balancing against 

France, rather than against a resurgent Germany.

• In 1945, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist 

Republics celebrated their common victory over Hitler 

Germany; 1 year later, the Cold War started, pitting the 

Western powers against their former Soviet ally.

So alliances do not live very long past victory. Why, then, is 

NATO still alive? Surely, it should have gone the way of all flesh in 

1994 when the last Russian soldier withdrew from Central Europe. 
34

But it did not. In fact, as we have seen, it expanded, which is a true 

miracle in the history of international politics.

I can think of at least three explanations, which all have a bearing 

on the future. One is institutions, the second is interests, and the 

third is innovation.

Institutions.

NATO has always been much more than a traditional alliance 

that aggregates military strength against a particular enemy. This 

alliance is so unique because it denationalized defense policy. Why 

do I say this? Remember that NATO is not just a “coalition of the 

willing,” but an integrated force with a unified command structure 

under a single Supreme Commander who is always an American. 

Integration, for the last 50 years, has shaped habits and above all 

institutions of cooperation that are absent from a traditional alliance. 

There are the NATO Council, the Defence Planning Committee, 

the Nuclear Planning Group, the High Level Group, and so on. 

Consultation and consensus-building are a permanent way of life 

in this alliance, and so the institutions of cooperation have become a 

value in their own right—worth keeping and worth preserving.

In addition, this institution by the name of NATO has been 

enormously successful in keeping the peace. Peace is good, not only 

for children and all other living things, but also for alliances because 

war is a powerful solvent of military coalitions. 

In war, when the going gets tough, the not-so-tough go shopping 

for alternatives. Some opt out because their objectives have been 

achieved. Others go neutral because they think they will be safer 

that way, or because it is a lot cheaper to let George do it and carry 

the brunt of the fighting. You can observe this phenomenon in Iraq 

right now as one after another nation withdraws from the coalition 

because permanent victory has proven elusive. But if there is no 

war, the incentives for bolting do not exist either, and so the status 

quo endures. Institutions that are not challenged go on forever. The 

economists have a word for it when they say: “Old taxes are good 

taxes.”
35

Interests.

What are the interests that provide the glue when the original 

cement disappears? There are lots of them. One, it is good to have an 

institution that keeps the United States anchored in Europe because 

you never know what is lurking down the road—especially to the 

east where Western Europe is facing a resurgent Russia.

Two, it is good to have the United States in a game where the 

weaker players do not want to be left alone with the medium-strong 

like Germany and France. So the United States provides not only 

a counterweight against a resurgent Russia, but also against these 

would-be leaders of Europe.

This is why you had that famous split between Old and New 

Europe during the Iraq war. The farther east you move, the more 

enthusiastic the newly liberated states of Eastern Europe have been 

about the United States. It was not in the interest of those closest to 

Russia to let France and Germany, with Belgium and Luxemburg 

in tow, to weaken either the United States or the alliance which it 

leads.

Third, and by no means last, there are no competing security 

organizations that can carry the burden of leadership and pay the 

price of security production. The EU has been trying to field a Rapid 

Reaction Force of 60,000 men for many years now. But the real 

problem is not manpower; in fact, the EU has more men under arms 

than the United States.

The real problem is twofold—military and political. With regard 

to the military dimension, while the EU has the men, it does not have 

the “money and the ships,” as the old 19th-century English ditty 

had it. When the largest EU member, Germany, spends as much 

proportionally in GDP terms as Luxemburg, namely 1.5 percent, 

you know there is a problem of resources. By contrast, the United 

States spends 4 percent of GDP on its military. As a result, the EU 

lacks, above all, projection forces: cargo planes, refuelling tankers, 

troop ships, etc. And so, when individual EU countries intervened 

in Africa, they had to ask the United States for the logistics.

The EU also lacks the kind of sophisticated weaponry and all 

the other accoutrements of “network-centric warfare” that allow 

the United States to fight at a safe stand-off distance. Modern 
36

democracies do not like body bags, and so they will go to war only 

if they can minimize their own casualties. In our days, casualtyavoidance requires lots of stand-off and precision-munitions, which 

are plentiful only in the American arsenal. Thus European or EU 

forces have never gone into serious military action without the 

United States, whether in Bosnia, Kosovo, or Afghanistan. For all its 

fabulous riches, with an economy the equal of the United States and 

a population of 450 million, the EU is a piggy-back giant, one that 

cannot do without the colossus from across the sea. So much for the 

military side of the ledger.

The second problem is political. Though the EU is way past a 

common market and by now boasts many features of a federal state, 

it lacks the coherence and decisiveness to play a role commensurate 

with its resources. A classic example is the War of the Yugoslav 

Succession in the 1990s. It unfolded 1 flying-hour from Rome, Munich, 

and Vienna; it was a series of wars right inside Europe, and yet the EU 

looked on helplessly as mass mayhem and “ethnic cleansing” took 

their course. It was only when Clinton’s America took the lead—and 

provided the airpower—that the EU unsheathed its sword against 

Slobodan Milosevic and Serbia. This is a puzzle with consequences: 

Why can’t Europe even take care of its own back yard? My answer 

is this: When it comes to the hard issues of security, Europe is still a 

bunch of separate nation-states rather than a unitary actor, and there 

is no player in the game strong and legitimate enough to lead the 

pack. 

Sadly, as very recent events showed, the EU cannot even generate 

the resolve to stand by a member-state under attack—Denmark, 

which found itself under assault from much of the Islamic world 

because of some cartoons deemed offensive against the Prophet. 

Danish embassies were burned, its exports boycotted. Yet there 

was no united economic and diplomatic response on the part of the 

others. This little country essentially was left alone.

Europe is big, rich, and populous, but it cannot replace this 

American-led alliance called NATO. In security affairs, it does not 

take a “whole village,” but a single superpower to make things 

happen. And so demand for NATO persists, even in the absence of 

the great foe that once gave rise to it and kept it going.
37

Innovation. 

So far, I have discussed the power of institutions and interests in 

explaining the longevity of NATO. The third factor is innovation. In 

the present context, it is better to think of innovation as “supply-side 

strategy.” This is how all institutions, military or business, survive 

when their original market dwindles. To stress the point again: The 

moment the last Russian soldier departed from Central Europe, the 

demand curve for NATO’s classical goods shifted rapidly downward. 

Naturally, companies that lose demand look for new products that 

can rekindle interest in their wares.

NATO persists in the absence of a powerful foe because it has 

changed from a single-product business, that is, deterring a Soviet 

attack, into a multifloor department store.

• On the first floor, there is the traditional stuff: an institution 

that keeps the habits of cooperation alive and its powder 

dry against the resurgence of a strategic threat. Call it a kind 

of insurance agency that buys reinsurance from the world’s 

number one underwriter, the United States.

• On the second floor, the Atlantic Alliance offers intervention

capabilities, where its “unique selling point” (USP), is a 

multinational force with the kind of firepower, sophistication, 

and command structures that has no equal in the rest of the 

world. Certainly, NATO is much better equipped and led 

than any force the UN has ever been able to field. In the 1990s, 

NATO applied its military power in two theaters: in Bosnia 

and in the Kosovo, with successful bombing campaigns 

against Serbia.

• On the third floor is a kind of tool shed, where coalitions of the 

willing are recruited and used. This is where individual NATO 

nations, not NATO as such, offer forces either for fighting 

or for post-combat operations. This is the case, notably, in 

Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Iraq.

• On the fourth floor are the stability operations, designed to 

keep the peace once the fighting is over. The shelves here are 

positively brimming with NATO goodies. Several examples 

will make the point. In 2003, NATO took over the command 
38

of ISAF, the Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. This 

was the first mission outside Western Europe in history. For 8 

years, until 2004, NATO led the International Stabilization 

Force (SFOR) in Bosnia. NATO still leads KFOR, an international force in charge of maintaining security in the Kosovo. 

Under Operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOR, NATO has been 

patrolling the Mediterranean since 9/11 to protect against 

international terrorism. Finally, NATO is even in Iraq, where 

it is training Iraqi security forces.

• Let’s go to the top floor, my favorite, where NATO offers its 

most attractive array of wares. Call it stability export. Here, 

the alliance has managed to attract the largest bunch of new 

customers—all those countries that joined NATO after the 

collapse of the Soviet Union: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, 

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and 

Slovenia. All of them have a classic security problem: the 

nearness of a very large and powerful state with an imperialist 

history that once owned or dominated them. 

But there is more: NATO is the largest and most successful 

guardian of democracy and stability. Thus, NATO managed to 

integrate arch-enemies like France and Germany. It managed to do the 

same to Greece and Turkey. It took in nondemocracies like Portugal 

and Spain, and provided the kind of haven where authoritarianism 

eventually lost out to democracy. Today, NATO provides a shelter 

that stabilizes the young democracies like Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Down the road, I could imagine Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, 

and Albania as members. The Ukraine would join at the drop of a 

hat. Some visionaries have even broached Israel as a member of the 

Alliance. In other words, demand for NATO’s best product—stability 

and safety—is strong and soaring. Not bad for a supposed warrior 

institution that is now in ripe middle age. 

Conclusions.

In conclusion, let me return to the original puzzle, which is 

persistence without a strategic threat. If you look at NATO as a 

department store or bazaar rather than as a traditional alliance, the 
39

puzzle of longevity is not that hard to crack. The three explanations 

are, as I just elaborated, interests, institutions, and innovation. And 

that is why this particular alliance cannot be understood in terms of 

classical alliance theory, whose iron law asserts that alliances lose 

when they win and die when they prevail.

Let me add, however, that for all its indestructibility in its newly 

evolved form, the “Classic NATO”—the compact that held the line 

during the Cold War—is, of course, dead. NATO is no longer the beall and end-all of Western politics, a role that it played out from 1949 

to 1994, the year the last Russian soldiers withdrew from Central 

Europe. Call it “New NATO,” one institution among several who all 

represent what I would dare call “The Best of the West.” Along with 

the EU, which also is a kind of “empire by invitation,” along with 

the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the Organization 

for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the G-8, and 

a host of subsidiary alliances like the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security 

Treaty, NATO embodies the postwar liberal and democratic vision 

that animated U.S. diplomacy during its most creative age. And 

that’s why it stays in business.

It also stays in business because NATO has evolved from a onetrick pony into a multipurpose institution. Its core function, however, 

remains military security in a world that, alas, has not reached the 

“End of History.” History may be coming to an end only in the sense 

that great wars between nation-states are becoming rarer. But the 

frequency of intrastate and nonstate war, i.e., terrorism, is growing 

by leaps and bounds. After decades of very slow or no nuclear 

proliferation, nuclear ambitions are soaring. At the same time, the 

defrocked superpower Russia is back in the global game, followed by 

new aspirants like China and Iran that used to play second-fiddle in 

the concert of nations. So it is good to have a tried-and-true security 

institution like NATO in the game. NATO’s enduring attraction is 

like Mount Everest’s: because it is there.

What about the future? Will it always act in common? No. But it 

can act in ways no other international institution can. 

Will it be the world’s policeman now that it has globalized its 

business activities? No, but it is the best multinational police force 

we have. 
40

Will it continue to expand? Most likely yes. 

Will it contract? Most likely no.

Will NATO continue to mute conflicts among its members, as it 

has done since 1949? I will bet at least even odds that it will. 

Will it secure the realm of democracy? For sure. 

Would international life be better without it? Definitely not.

Finally, will we meet here again in 5 or 10 years and ask, “Whither 

the Alliance?” My answer is yes. With all its crises and squabbles, 

the Alliance reminds me of those two hunters who were flown into 

Alaska for a week of bear hunting. “Remember,” the pilot warns 

them, “when I am back a week from now to pick you up, only one 

bear. This plane isn’t strong enough to carry two or more.” When 

he returns, there are two dead bears lying on the strip. “Come on,” 

the hunters plead, “we can make it; here is another 300 bucks for 

your effort.” So the plane takes off and crashes 2 minutes later. Both 

hunters survive. In a daze, one asks the other, “Where are we?” And 

his buddy replies, “About 100 yards from where we crashed last 

year.” 

Of course, they’ll come back in following years. Because, like our 

two hunters, the Alliance won’t run out of bears, and it has plenty of 

planes and ammunition. 
41

CLOSING REMARKS BY DEAN RICHARD A. CHILCOAT

I want to thank all of our participants, but especially our keynote 

speakers and panel chairs Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Dr. Michael Desch, Dr. 

Robert Ivany, Dr. David McIntyre, and Dr. Johan Lembke, for helping 

to frame discussion at the conference.

Thanks to our executive committee and staff, especially Michelle 

Sullens, Lucero Carranza, Matt Henderson, and Read Deal, who 

have been involved in this project for over a year.

Thanks again to our sponsors, including the European Center 

of Excellence at Texas A&M, the George Bush Presidential Library 

Foundation, the Department of the Army’s Eisenhower National 

Security Series, and the Army War College’s Strategic Studies 

Institute.

The panels covered the realignment of U.S. forces in Europe, 

homeland security, and terrorism from multiple perspectives, 

and the trends and themes of U.S. and European grand strategy. 

While we highlighted numerous challenges and underscored 

important differences in the European and American perspectives 

and approaches, I know we took important steps towards fulfilling 

the goals of this conference in terms of education, research, and 

outreach for developing a deeper understanding of the transatlantic 

relationship.

In terms of service and outreach, numerous students and faculty 

attended the conference panels and keynote speeches. I believe the 

fruitful discussion so evident in each panel contributed to a deeper 

understanding by the audience. With regard to research, another 

conference goal, the panelists were able to share their many years 

of expertise and research in a collaborative effort to highlight both 

the conceptual and the technical questions facing the U.S.-European 

alliance. I am optimistic that the national security community will 

seriously examine this conference report. 

The goal of education, however, will not be filled simply by 

the publication of this report. It is incumbent upon all of us to take 

back to our academies and organizations the important lessons and 

issues brought forward at the conference. In this vein of continuing 
42

education, our staff, headed by Professor Joseph Cerami, has made 

the report available to interested students, faculty, and policymakers 

around the globe.

As President George H. W. Bush remarked, “The transatlantic 

relationship has contributed immensely to the prosperity and 

stability of the entire globe, but we face new challenges every day. 

We must continue to search for areas of common understanding and 

cooperative action on both continents.” 
43

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Conference participants were given the opportunity to submit 

a paper or article addressing important issues confronting the 

transatlantic relationship before and after the conference. Papers 

include:

Alan P. Dobson, The Atlantic Alliance and Blair’s Pivotal Power: Trying 

to Make All Things Special; 

Guillaume Parmentier, How to Avoid a Transatlantic Rift over Iran;

Randall J. Larsen, Dark Winter/Atlantic Storm: Key Issues from Two 

Executive Level Exercises;

Daniel S. Hamilton and Bradley T. Smith, Atlantic Storm: Facing the 

Bioterror Challenge;

Johan Lembke, American Realignment in Europe; and

Patrick B. Baetjer, Turkey, Russia, and Sticky Institutions: Why the 

Transatlantic Security Relationship Endures—and Some Thoughts on 

Future Missions.

45

THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE AND BLAIR’S PIVOTAL POWER:

TRYING TO MAKE ALL THINGS SPECIAL

Professor Alan P. Dobson

THE CHALLENGE

Maybe there is a danger of commentators and scholars on both 

sides of the Atlantic talking the Atlantic Alliance into a more serious 

situation than it is actually in: a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy 

brought about by too much concentration on the negative and a lack 

of more positive and creative imagination. 

With the disappearance of Cold War strategic certainties, fractious 

debates have arisen about the purpose of the Western Alliance, the 

troubled relationship between the United States and Europe, with 

Britain often awkwardly placed in between, and particularly NATO 

and the Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP). 

Back in the early 1990s, within a year of coming into office, President 

Clinton anticipated some of these problems when he expressed 

nostalgia for the simple clarities of the Cold War. Its imperatives 

dictated, among other things, the need for a strong Atlantic alliance, 

but what was NATO and transatlantic security to be concerned with 

after the collapse of communism? And what would be the point of 

the United States allowing the vestiges of some erstwhile special 

relationship to drag on with Britain? The rationale for a defense 

alliance appeared to have been removed. Who or what was now 

likely to challenge either Europe or the United States? 

One way of circumventing those questions and of arguing for 

continuity was to assert that neither NATO nor the Anglo-American 

special relationship has ever been a realist-driven arrangement 

exclusively obsessed with security: they partly embrace and partly 

make manifest communities of values and attitudes as well as defense 

needs. These latter claims need careful analysis because by 2006 

the idea of overlapping values and attitudes was being challenged 

seriously. Robert Kagan has caricatured Americans and Europeans 
46

respectively as Martians and Venusians.1 Emmanuel Todd agrees 

with Kagan that there are profound differences between the United 

States and Europe (and he includes the British albeit somewhat 

ambivalently in this), although he holds a different perspective 

which includes claims that U.S. power is in precipitous decline.2

Ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder believes that NATO is 

“no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss 

and coordinate strategies.”3 The gap between defense expenditure 

on each side of the Atlantic has rapidly widened, 3.9 percent of the 

gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States and an average of 

1.75 percent in Europe. There are massive discrepancies in military 

capabilities, while France and the United States in particular have 

major arguments over strategic doctrine, as well as the status of 

NATO and the CESDP. Finally, in 2003 U.S. Defense Secretary 

Donald Rumsfeld seemed to completely discount even the value of 

the Anglo-American special relationship when he declared that the 

United States could very well do without British troops for the war 

of liberation in Iraq.4

So where does the answer lie concerning questions on the future 

of U.S.-European relations? Is it to be found in a reformulation of 

security needs resonating with realist assumptions, or does it lie in a 

reforging of a community of shared values and attitudes reinforced 

by appropriate institutions, or is there some kind of third way a la 

Blair, or should the relationship be terminated and arrangements 

made for the wake? 

NOTHING’S NEW?

Problems that now afflict transatlantic relations are not particularly new, though this issue will be revisited again in the conclusion. 

However, whether they are new or not, there are no easy answers, 

and this is no different than in the past. The solution to the current 

problems cannot be provided by a cold calculation of realist security 

needs, nor does the answer lie solely in invoking a community of 

values and attitudes. The problem is that some transatlantic security 

needs are shared, some are not; and on either side of the Atlantic, 

attitudes wax, wane, and shift as one would expect in pluralistic 

societies. Some values which are not shared have a tendency to raise 
47

conflict, or at least important challenges for reconciliation: both the 

Suez Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated that NATO’s 

Article 5 three musketeers’ principle of all-for-one and one-for-all 

could be overridden by narrower national interests. Similarly, some 

values and attitudes are shared and some are not; again, those that 

are not may tend to cause friction and conflict unless managed and 

controlled carefully. Values and attitudes lack homogeneity as well 

on both sides of the Atlantic. Nothing is given and nothing can be 

taken for granted, except that they challenge political leaders to deal 

with them, and it is how they are dealt with that counts. The idea 

that shared values and attitudes create a community which can work 

together harmoniously to perpetuate itself is as fatuous as the hopes 

at the start of the 20th century that shared values and attitudes and 

economic interdependence had made war between the European 

nation-states an impossibility. Apart from other considerations, 

values can dramatically change as Nazi Germany demonstrated 

to the cost of all. Also, common values and attitudes are impotent 

unless there is a political will and the skill to employ them in common 

enterprises. Bearing these observations in mind, what light might be 

cast on current problems by the workings of the Anglo-American 

special relationship and Tony Blair’s recent diplomacy? 

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: 

A POSSIBLE MODEL?

A close Anglo-American security relationship has been maintained since the 1930s. It continues today, providing an important 

bridge between the United States and Europe. For example, the 

July 2004 British Defence Command Paper made it very clear that 

interoperability with the United States and tasks defined in a manner 

very similar to the U.S. 2002 strategy document were at the heart 

of things. Among some of the key points are that the new policy 

should “enhance our ability to lead or be the framework nation for 

European (and other coalition) operations where the United States is 

not engaged.” However, there also is an assumption “that the most 

complex large-scale operations will only be conducted as part of a 

U.S.-led coalition.”5 This is what might be called the structure for 
48

the formal special defense relationship. It also involves intelligence 

cooperation on a vast scale that stretches back to World War II and 

the UK-U.S. signals intelligence agreement of 1948.6 The recent 

revelations about intelligence-gathering prior to the invasion of 

Iraq in 2003 provided further evidence of just how extensive this 

cooperation is. For example, an American representative often sits 

in on meetings of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee. Britain and 

the United States operate so closely in the intelligence sphere that it 

is difficult to see how they can be disentangled. 

Nuclear cooperation, most notably with the U.S. supply of 

delivery vehicles for the UK nuclear deterrent, was made possible 

by the 1958 U.S.-UK Mutual Defence Agreement, which was 

renewed in 2004, thus giving Britain the option of purchasing yet 

another generation of delivery systems from the United States. 

Part of Britain’s contribution to all this is to provide facilities for 

information-gathering and early radar warning for the U.S. national 

missile defense program, most notably at Fylingdales and Menwith 

Hill. Buttressing the formal is a long-standing informal special 

defense relationship. During the Falklands War of 1982, the U.S. 

Navy dramatically increased its logistical and intelligence support 

of the Royal Navy without any formal agreement having to be made. 

As the U.S. Navy Secretary later commented, this was illustrative of 

a relationship like no other between foreign navies.7 More recently, 

the relationship between the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and the Royal Air 

Force (RAF) has been described as “an excellent model of successful 

coalition relations,” with the further observations that personnel 

“exchange tours have long been a staple of the relationship” and 

that the RAF “has continued to fly (since the end of the Cold War) 

with U.S. airmen and provide U.S. access to bases in the United 

Kingdom, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia during Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM in Afghanistan and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.”8 This 

informal special relationship often can bond tighter than formal 

arrangements.

Britain consistently has struggled to establish a robust and 

permanent transatlantic alliance. It stretches back to Winston 

Churchill’s three spheres strategy for British foreign policy—the 

Commonwealth, the United States, and Europe. It was at the heart 
49

of Ernest Bevin’s strategy for dealing with both the danger of 

revanchism in West Germany and the threat from Moscow. In 1979 

British Foreign Secretary David Owen wrote: “I see no incompatibility 

whatever in maintaining a strong commitment to the Atlantic 

Alliance with Community membership and full participation in the 

responsibilities of Commonwealth.”9 And in 1999 Blair declared his 

aim of establishing Britain as “a pivotal power, as a power that is 

at the crux of alliances and international politics which shape the 

world and its future.”10 Britain would play, among other things, a 

pivotal role between the United States and Europe, with Blair trying 

to mediate between them and hold things together. But this is not 

simple. The Anglo-American special relationship could hardly be 

held forth as a model for Europe to emulate if Britain is seen as 

Washington’s poodle. Dispelling such an image often can be difficult. 

For example, the British triumph over U.S. negotiators in the 1976-

77 Bermuda 2 Air Services Agreement and Britain’s upholding of 

its favored position ever since is not exactly likely to have the same 

impact as the image of the British poodle; actually, a picture of a 

bulldog savaging the American bald eagle would depict a more 

accurate aspect of the relationship in this important commercial 

sphere.11

But there are other problems as well. Britain does have conflicting 

loyalties. Its vision of Europe, particularly of a European security 

role, is more compatible with American views than those of any of 

its European partners; consequently, it clashes with the visions of 

other leading member states, most notably with France’s. Europe is 

not homogeneous in its view of the United States by any means, but 

it is probably true to say that France represents the most challenging 

European position for the United States and for the continuation of 

a strong transatlantic security arrangement. France is determined to 

develop a strong European independent defense capability and to 

throw off the shackles of what it sees as U.S. hegemonic dominance. 

For its part, the United States in the security sphere has three clear 

priorities: it wants Europe to shoulder more of the burden of defense 

and increase its military capabilities; it wants NATO to remain the 

dominant defense organization for Europe and the Atlantic region 

and to develop out-of-area capabilities; and it wants an official 
50

presence at the EU table to bring pressures to bear and to ensure 

that the EU does not become too independent-minded in security 

matters. These positions represent substantial challenges for those 

who want to perpetuate and strengthen the transatlantic alliance. 

Matters have not been made any easier by the values and policies 

of the administration of George W. Bush, for example, its penchant 

for unilateralism, its insistence on the universalism of American 

democratic and free-market values, and its strategy of preventative 

strike.

BLAIR’S PIVOTING

The idea that Britain might act in such a way as to reconcile 

and bring together Europe and the United States in a special kind 

of relationship is not as far-fetched as one might think. While an 

important part of the thesis here is that there is an Anglo-American 

special relationship that might provide a model for future transatlantic developments, it also is contended that a high degree of specialness has existed between the United States and Europe as a whole 

since the 1940s. The suggestion, therefore, is not that Blair and his 

successors might conjure something up from nothing, or indeed that 

Britain could in some way consummate this project alone. Germany 

has had a long-standing close relationship with the United States, 

and the Schröder breach may very well be an aberration rather than a 

new trend. Also, many countries in eastern and central Europe, most 

notably Poland, have strong ethnic and political ties and sympathies 

with the United States. Bearing these points in mind, let us turn to 

the CESDP to see how Blair’s pivotal role has performed in recent 

years.

Suggestions of developing an independent European military 

capability have met repeatedly with muted and sometimes not so 

muted criticisms from the United States. During Clinton’s time, these 

took the form of Ambassador Dobbins’ demarche and Madeleine 

Albright’s warnings of prospective problems for NATO; during 

George W. Bush’s time, we have had Donald Rumsfeld’s 

characteristically robust warnings about reducing the effectiveness 

of NATO and disturbing transatlantic links. With the St. Malo 
51

rapprochement between Blair and Chirac in 1998 and the launch of the 

CESDP, Blair was confronted with a delicate balancing act. American 

warnings of undermining NATO as well as the overall transatlantic 

relationship rang in one ear and Chirac’s obviously different 

interpretation of the CESDP rang in the other. Chirac: “There cannot 

be a Europe without its own defense system.”12 Between 1998 and 

2006, there were developments in the CESDP, and Blair has managed 

to tread the tightrope. This has not been achieved without serious 

wobbling by Blair on that tightrope. Sometimes the unbalancing came 

from the United States, sometimes it came from Europe. At their first 

meeting in late February 2001, Blair extracted agreement from Bush 

and his advisers that they would support the European Defence 

Initiative launched at St. Malo, providing it did not compromise 

NATO, in return for UK support, albeit muted, for the U.S. National 

Missile Defense System and agreement to allow the United States 

to upgrade its facilities at Fylingdales as part of that program.13

However, things did not develop smoothly. The championing by the 

United States in 2002 of a NATO Reaction Force (RF) rather stole the 

thunder from Europe’s proposal for a Rapid Reaction Force, which 

at that time was languishing in “planning stages” largely on paper. 

Europe—pushed on by Britain and France—firmed up commitments 

inter alia to develop 13 battle groups of 1,500 troops each, deployable 

within 30 days. The European Defence Agency also has been created 

to promote harmonization of equipment, research and development 

policy, and common European procurement policies. 

At the same time there have been these positive developments, 

Britain has managed to head off suggestions that would have 

run counter to the interests of NATO and the United States. The 

European military policy planning cell agreed on in 2003 has thus 

been embedded in Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe 

(SHAPE), developments with the Western European Union (WEU) 

have been blocked, and provisions have been excluded from the now 

defunct European Constitution which ran contrary to upholding the 

status of NATO. At the same time, there have been developments 

in NATO, strongly backed by the UK, which speak to American 

desires for its new agenda. Out-of-area operations are proliferating, 

and the expansion of NATO has provided forward positions for the 

United States in its posture vis-à-vis the Middle East and oil-rich 
52

and strategically placed central Asian republics. These republics 

are strategically placed not only for oil, of course, but also in the 

confrontation with terrorism. As Luca Ratti explains from the realist 

perspective: 

The United States has continued to use NATO as a political mechanism 

to secure adherence to its strategic and foreign policy objectives, forestall 

the development of an independent European security and defence 

structure, and acquire strategic advantages useful for the projection of 

U.S. power towards Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. 

The alliance’s main undertakings since the end of the Cold War, such 

as intervention in the Balkans, expansion to former Warsaw Pact states, 

political co-existence with Russia, and, more recently, the handing over of 

peacekeeping responsibilities in Bosnia and Macedonia to the European 

Union are profoundly intertwined with U.S. strategic interests.14

One should add that they also are intertwined with Europe’s as 

well.

CONCLUSION

Senior scholars such as Geir Lundestad and Georges-Henri Soutou 

may be right in claiming that aspects of the current transatlantic 

difficulties are so corrosive that they differ from those that have 

afflicted the alliance in the past, that there will be further transatlantic 

drift, and that France and the United States are irreconcilable.15 It is 

true that the Cold War has passed, there has been a resurgence of U.S. 

unilateralism, and significant changes have taken place in Europe, not 

to mention the recent dominance of a rigid neo-conservative ideology 

in the United States. Still, one wonders whether these developments 

are any more significant than the Suez Crisis, European integration 

from the 1950s to the 1990s, or the unilateralism made manifest in 

U.S. policies such as Nixon’s New Economic Policy and the waging 

of a war in Vietnam. Thus, despite all the difficulties that have 

buffeted the NATO Alliance and transatlantic relations generally 

over the last decade or so, one should neither see them as something 

new, nor ignore the progress that has been made towards smoothing 

things out and strengthening ties. NATO has developed since the 

end of the Cold War and now provides new security pay-offs for 
53

all its members: stability and anchorage for the ex-communist states 

in a democratic Europe buttressed by the expansion of the EU; a 

powerful voice in world affairs—often forgotten is that the only time 

Article 5’s all-for-one and one-for-all principle has been invoked 

was to help the United States in the aftermath of 9/11; NATO now 

conducts out-of-area operations that are quite significant securitywise; and NATO expansion has enhanced the alliance’s posture 

with regard to strategically sensitive areas, i.e., the Middle East, the 

Caucasus, and Central Asia. At the same time CESDP has developed 

modestly and in a way that is largely acceptable to the United States 

and which has encouraged Europe. No matter how hell-bent the 

French might be on developing an independent European military 

capability, they know that it would not be credible without British 

participation; that requires some compromise and shift in French 

policies, both of which having been in evidence in recent years. As 

for the community of values and attitudes, while these remain badly 

bruised by 9/11’s aftermath and differences over environmental, 

social, and economic policies, there also is a growing awareness of 

the importance of transatlantic ties, with both sides having taken 

steps to try to improve things, following Blair in the vanguard.

This picture is not as promising as the rather over-optimistic 

scenario painted by Timothy Garton Ash, although some of the 

evidence he cites for the mutual economic benefits to be derived 

by both sides is persuasive: each has over $3 trillion of assets in the 

other.16 The picture merely emphasizes that an important political 

game needs to be played and decisions taken to negotiate what 

undoubtedly will be a difficult way forward. One route, which may 

not be too fanciful, is that instead of Britain ditching the special 

relationship for the sake of its role in Europe, Blair should continue 

with his pivotal role and attempt to renew and widen the special 

relationship that has bound the United States and Europe so closely 

together since 1945. In the field of security, he has already marked 

up some successes by obtaining compromises with France and rather 

grudging acceptance of them by the United States. One thing certain 

is that the relationship between the United States and Europe cannot 

be encapsulated by either realist security prescriptions or by liberal 

conceptions of moral and attitudinal communities. There is no clear-
54

cut dichotomy between interests and affections: interests often are 

determined by affections and vice versa. If Europe and the United 

States are to move ahead together in an ever closer union, then policies 

that reflect common affections and interests must have pride of place 

and must be cultivated in order to allow tolerance of differences of 

interests and affections on both sides. Moreover, political decisions 

will need to be taken to exploit these possibilities in the same way that 

both American and British politicians, notwithstanding differences, 

difficulties, and clashes of interest, have taken decisions which have 

kept alive a special Anglo-American relationship for well over half a 

century. 

ENDNOTES

1. Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World 

Order, New York: Knopf, 2003.

2. Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of American Order, London: 

Constable, 2004.

3. Gerhard Schröder at the 41st Munich Conference on Security Policy on 

February 12, 2005, www.druckversion.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Speech perecent20Ch 

perecent20Schroeder perecent2041th perecent20Munich perecent20Conference.pdf. 

4. “Germany Urges NATO Reform and Re-think of Transatlantic Ties,” Agence 

France Press, February 13, 2005; for defence expenditure figures, see S. Marsh and 

H. Mackenstein, The International Relations of the European Union, Harlow, United 

Kingdom: Pearson, 2005, p. 91.

5. “Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities,” British 

Defence Command Paper 6269, July 2004.

6. Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between UK/

USA Countries, London: Routledge, 1990 (revised edition).

7. David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: The Relationship Between 

Britain and America in the Twentieth Century, London: Hodder and Staughton, 1988, 

pp. 314-315.

8. Christopher Finn and Paul D. Berg, “Anglo-American Strategic Air Power 

Co-operation in the Cold War and Beyond,” Air and Space Power Journal, Winter 

2004.

9. David Owen, “Britain and the United States,” in W. E. Leuchtenburg 

et al., Britain and the United States: Four Views to Mark the Silver Jubilee, London: 

Heinemann, 1979, p. 76. 

10. Blair’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, London, November 22, 1999, 

www.the-islander.org.ac/oldsite/1461.htm. 
55

11. Alan P. Dobson, “Regulation or Competition: Negotiating the AngloAmerican Air Service Agreement 1977,” Journal of Transport History, Vol. 2, 1994, 

pp. 144-165.

12. “EU Defence Plan Baffles NATO,” December 3, 2003, www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/

hi/world/europe3287009.stm. 

13. Anthony Seldon et al., Blair, London: Free Press, 2005, p. 612. 

14. Luca Ratti, “Post-Cold War NATO and International Relations Theory: The 

Case for Neo-Classical Realism,” forthcoming in Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 

Vol. 4, No.1, Spring 2006.

15. Geir Lundestad, “Towards Atlantic Drift,” and Georges-Henri Soutou, 

“Three Rifts, Two Reconciliations: Franco-American Relations during the Fifth 

Republic,” David M. Andrews, ed., The Atlantic Alliance Under Stress: U.S.-European 

Relations After Iraq, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 9-30, 102-

128.

16. Timothy Garton Ash, Free World, London: Penguin, 2004.

57

HOW TO AVOID A TRANSATLANTIC RIFT OVER IRAN1

Dr. Guillaume Parmentier

Originally appeared in Financial Times, April 28, 2006. Reprinted with permission.

A painful conclusion must be drawn from the Iran controversy: 

Two Gulf wars have taught Middle Eastern rulers—and to a 

large extent their populations—that if Iraq had possessed nuclear 

weapons, Saddam Hussein would probably still be in power. The 

United States and the international coalition would not have dared 

attack him when he invaded Kuwait. 

There can be little doubt that most Iranians support their leaders’ 

nuclear plans. Iran sees itself, somewhat justifiably, as a great nation 

surrounded by potential enemies in an unstable region. The Arabs 

never liked the Persians. The Sunnis hate the Shias, who predominate 

in Iran. Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. The U.S. military 

is next door in Iraq, and President George W. Bush has labelled Iran 

part of the “Axis of Evil.”

All western countries agree that the problem is very grave. If 

Iran tests a weapon, other regional powers will follow. This does not 

mean the United States and Europe will always see eye to eye on the 

issue. The Americans and Europeans have different perspectives. 

For the United States, the regime is the problem. Since September 

11, 2001 (9/11), America feels that the main danger to international 

security comes from governments that combine hostility towards 

U.S. policy with poor human rights records. For the Europeans, the 

issue is essentially one of nuclear proliferation, necessitating that 

attention therefore be paid to the regional equation, since this is the 

main catalyst for a national decision to obtain nuclear weapons. On 

that basis, a serious transatlantic crisis may be in the making if the 

western powers do not reconcile their divergent perspectives.

For the Europeans, it is wrong to concentrate exclusively on the 

nuclear issue. The broader problem lies in Iran’s relationship with 

the rest of the world. Many Iranians, especially young ones, want 

more information, contacts, and ideas from abroad. Mahmoud 
58

Ahmadi-Nejad’s victory in the 2005 presidential elections can be 

attributed to a rejection of a corrupt elite rather than support for his 

reactionary views. A more open Iran would make it difficult for the 

mullahs to impose their orthodoxy, which bears heavily on the lives 

of Iranians in ways that most of them resent. This does not mean 

Iranians want to become western, or are “pro-American,” or that a 

U.S. military strike and/or international economic sanctions would 

not be condemned universally in Iran. But, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, 

the former U.S. national security adviser, wrote recently: “The 

mullahs are Iran’s past, not its future.” Western interest lies in Iran 

becoming more open to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, it will be difficult to open Iran. The United States 

officially does not recognize the country, although there have recently 

been informal and discreet talks with Iran on Iraq. The contacts 

essentially have to come from Europe.

Even more difficult, Iran’s leaders understand the population’s 

desire to connect to the world, and they fear for their control over the 

people. No doubt this is what lies behind the recent and revolting 

radicalization of the language used by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad and other 

Iranian leaders: the anti-Semitic slurs, the threats against Israel, and 

the denial of the Holocaust make it almost impossible for the West to 

extend an open hand to Iran. It is therefore difficult for the Europeans 

to continue to maintain a dialogue on the model of the now-shelved 

EU3 effort on uranium enrichment. This places them in a difficult 

position because they can no longer come forward with clear policy 

options: while they do not disagree with the U.S. diagnosis, they 

remain convinced that fixes will not work. The U.S. refusal last 

year to offer security guarantees and diplomatic recognition as a 

complement to the EU3 approach has deprived Europe of its main 

tool. Western options remain drastically limited. It would be wise to 

recognize this limitation and avoid definitive statements that cannot 

be backed by action.

Although Iran’s government is unpopular, Europeans recognize 

that the post-1979 regime is the country’s first genuinely national 

one for a long time: the Shah was perceived widely by Iranians as 

an American puppet, and previous regimes also had been foreigndominated. Foreign interference in Iranian affairs always will be 
59

strongly resented. The West must keep this in mind when dealing 

with Iran to avoid cementing popular support for the leadership. Talk 

of military strikes, denied for the present by Mr. Bush, is exceedingly 

unhelpful in this respect. The analogy with Iraq is wrong, at least 

at this stage. If only for military reasons, occupation and regime 

change are out of the question. “Selective strikes” against nuclear 

installations would only ensure the eventual development by Iran of 

nuclear weapons, with massive popular support. And isolating Iran 

would only buttress an unpopular regime and give it a scapegoat to 

blame for the country’s difficulties. Any embargo that would strike 

the population would be as counterproductive as has been the U.S. 

embargo on Cuba.

Better to hold our nose and maintain contact with the country, 

while using information, visits, economic relations, and the like in 

the hope that it will weaken the leadership in the long haul. After all, 

it worked with the Soviets.

ENDNOTE

1. This article, which appeared in the Financial Times on April 28, 2006, is 

available at news.ft.com/cms/s/07e2d53c-d615-11da8b3a-0000779e2340.html.

61

NOTE

Two documents are provided here. The first, by Colonel Randall 

Larsen, summarizes key issues that emerged from two simulated 

bioterrorist attacks, Dark Winter and Atlantic Storm. The second 

piece, by Dr. Daniel Hamilton and Dr. Bradley Smith, examines the 

lessons of Atlantic Storm in greater depth.

DARK WINTER/ATLANTIC STORM:

KEY ISSUES FROM TWO EXECUTIVE LEVEL EXERCISES

Colonel Randall J. Larsen

Background.

On June 22-23, 2001, the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian 

Biodefense Strategies, in collaboration with the Center for Strategic 

and International Studies, the Analytic Services Institute for 

Homeland Security, and the Oklahoma National Memorial Institute 

for the Prevention of Terrorism, held a senior-level exercise called 

Dark Winter. It simulated a covert smallpox attack on the United

States. The first suchexercise of its kind,Dark Winter was conceived

to examine the challenges that senior-level policymakers would 

have to deal with if confronted by a bioterrorist attack initiating 

outbreaks of a contagious disease. The exercise was intended to

increase awareness among senior national security experts of the

scope and character of the threat posed by biological weapons, and

to bring about actions that would improve prevention and response 

strategies. Participants included the Governor of Oklahoma, a 

former U.S. Senator, a former advisor to four U.S. Presidents, the 

former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the former 

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the former Deputy 

Secretary of Defense, the former Assistant Secretary for Health and 

Human Services for Emergency Planning, and other national security 

experts.
62

Key Issues.

Many of the key issues identified in this domestically-focused 

exercise also emerged as critical issues in the internationally-focused 

Atlantic Storm exercise conducted on January 14, 2005. (See Atlantic 

Storm article by Dr. Dan Hamilton below.)

Key issues from Dark Winter also explored during Atlantic Storm 

were:

1. Epidemics and pandemics, whether natural or man-made, 

do not recognize state or international boundaries. However, most 

response mechanisms are based on state organizations and leaders 

(Dark Winter) and national organizations and leaders (Atlantic 

Storm). The only effective response mechanisms will be those that 

utilize multijurisdictional/international planning and response.

2. Leaders at all levels will face difficult decisions due to limited 

resources. Who will receive the vaccines and treatments? Is it best to 

share supplies in an attempt to stop the spread before it reaches one’s 

own state/country? Who should enjoy priority in receiving these 

lifesaving drugs: medical and public health personnel, government 

leaders, children, law enforcement, military, elderly, etc.? Such 

priorities must be considered and resolved prior to a crisis.

3. In addition to the obvious public health aspects of an epidemic/

pandemic (in these two exercises, it was smallpox; however, most 

contagious pathogens would present the same challenges), the 

resulting economic catastrophe could far surpass the public health 

implications in terms of adverse effects on national security. In 

2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) killed only 800 

people worldwide, yet caused enormous economic disruptions 

throughout Asia and in Canada. Often, the damage to the economy 

can be attributed to fear (SARS), but in other cases, it is caused by the 

draconian reactions by government leaders. Leaders must walk that 

fine line between publicly minimizing the scale of the threat, which 

otherwise leads to a loss of trust from the public and uncontrolled 

fear (well-documented in the 1918 flu pandemic) on one hand, and 

over-reacting (Swine flu 1972—where more people died from the 

hastily prepared vaccine than from the flu itself), on the other. 

4. Travel restrictions and quarantine are other issues explored 

during Dark Winter and Atlantic Storm. Not only do these measures 
63

pose their own unique challenges, but they may not be the best solution to halting the spread of a pandemic. From an economic stand

point, a global economy based on just-in-time delivery would shut 

down if faced with severe travel restrictions. Additionally, many 

medical experts believe these actions would be of limited benefit 

to public health, but would cause a great drain on resources which 

could be used for more important services. As just one example, 

the personnel necessary to enforce a quarantine could be employed 

instead to ensure the rapid and efficient distribution of key 

supplies.

Conclusion.

The bottom line is that leaders must reach out across jurisdictional 

lines, both interstate and international, to prepare properly for largescale public health disasters. This is not the sort of activity that can 

be developed and executed properly on the fly. It must come from 

plans and exercises that were well-tested prior to the crisis. Epidemics 

and pandemics do not recognize state and international borders. 

Planning and response programs based on 20th-century attitudes 

about borders will fail when faced with 21st-century public health 

challenges.

65

ATLANTIC STORM:

FACING THE BIOTERROR CHALLENGE

Dr. Daniel S. Hamilton

and

Dr. Bradley T. Smith

In early 2005, 11 former ministers and heads of government from 

Europe and North America confronted a simulated threat no one 

should ever have to face in the real world: The use of contagious 

disease as a weapon. Our simulation, Atlantic Storm, was designed 

to provoke the imagination and to prompt action by making the 

reality of deliberate epidemics more vivid and by underscoring our 

shared responsibility to prevent this eventuality if possible, and also 

to prepare for and respond to such a threat at the international level. 

The lessons learned from the Atlantic Storm scenario are relevant to 

all large-scale, destabilizing epidemics of infectious disease—be they 

natural or intentional. Atlantic Storm illustrated that preparedness 

matters—leaders cannot be expected to create the necessary systems 

to respond to an epidemic in the midst of an international security 

crisis. With the looming threat of a global influenza pandemic, there 

is even more urgency to reinforce international health security.

Background.

Atlantic Storm was a ministerial-level exercise simulating a 

series of bioterrorism attacks on the transatlantic community. The 

exercise occurred on January 14, 2005, in Washington, DC. It was 

designed, organized, and convened by a team from the Center for 

Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (www.

upmc-biosecurity.org), the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the 

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns 

Hopkins University (transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu), and the Transatlantic 

Biosecurity Network. 

Summit principals, who were all current or former senior 

government leaders, were challenged to address strategic issues 

such as attaining situational awareness in the wake of a bioattack, 
66

coping with scarcity of critical medical resources such as vaccine, 

deciding how to manage the movement of people across borders, 

and communicating with their publics. Atlantic Storm illustrated 

that much might be done in advance to minimize illness and death 

as well as the social, economic, and political disruption that could be 

caused by a bioterror attack or international epidemic.

Any lessons to be harvested are welcome at this time, especially 

given growing concerns about the possibility of an avian influenza 

pandemic that would require an international response. However, 

international leaders cannot create the necessary response systems 

in the midst of a crisis. Medical, public health, security, diplomatic, 

and emergency response systems, as well as critical resources such 

as medicines and vaccines, must be in place before a bioattack occurs 

or a pandemic emerges.

The Atlantic Storm scenario was centered around a campaign 

of fictitious deliberate outbreaks of smallpox in Europe and North 

America. The organizers used the best available medical and 

epidemiological data on smallpox to design a conservative version 

of the outbreak to be used to drive the exercise. The primary goal of 

Atlantic Storm was not to “model” a smallpox outbreak, but rather 

to illuminate strategic challenges to be faced by the international 

community in responding collectively to a bioterrorist attack or any 

other large-scale epidemic. A number of diseases could have been 

chosen to drive the exercise. A document explaining all assumptions 

and scenario design decisions is available on the Atlantic Storm 

website (www.atlantic-storm.org).

What to do?

The Atlantic Storm scenario—destructive and disruptive as it 

was—could have been much worse. Unless we forge new health 

security alliances to meet the bioterrorist threat, an attack of mass 

lethality is not a matter of whether, but when. Just as Atlantic Storm 

began, the scientific journal Nature announced the development of 

biological techniques that permit rapid, accurate synthesis of long 

segments of DNA from nonliving parts, and in October 2005 the 

1918 “Spanish” flu virus was re-created in the laboratory. These and 
67

other developments will help researchers seeking new medicines 

and vaccines. But they also put the synthesis (and therefore the 

modification) of large viruses such as smallpox, and perhaps even 

bacteria, within the reach of hundreds of laboratories around the 

world. The age of engineered biological weapons is here. It is not 

science fiction.

There is evidence that nonstate actors are actively seeking to 

develop biological weapons and will not refrain from using them. 

Can we shift the advantage from such potential mass murderers? 

Absolutely. But it requires the will and the imagination to take 

corrective actions that are more than piecemeal extensions of current 

policies. Following are several concrete recommendations.

• The international community must plan for coordinated 

responses to major bioattacks and epidemics. Such plans 

should include strategic and operational details commensurate with that conducted by major international security 

organizations for more traditional threats. The roles and 

relevance of such organizations also should be reviewed in 

the light of such threats. 

The first step is to recognize that this threat requires something 

more holistic than buying more vaccine or training more doctors. 

It means integrating our public health and national security 

communities in ways that allow us to supplement our traditional 

security emphasis on territorial defense with a focus on integration 

and cooperation across borders. Werner Hoyer, member of the 

German Bundestag and former Deputy Foreign Minister, who played 

the German Chancellor in Atlantic Storm, stated after conclusion of 

the exercise: “For someone who has been around in the security and 

defense fields in its traditional sense for many years, this was quite a 

surprising and breathtaking exercise. . . . This is something I think a 

very small minority of politicians in Europe are aware of. . . .” 

Many of the senior participants in Atlantic Storm concluded 

that key multilateral frameworks such as the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) are limited in 

their ability to cope with the unique challengesposed by a bioweaponinduced spread of epidemic disease. Would a bioweapon attack 

that threatens a nation’s health rather than its territory warrant a 
68

collective response under NATO’s mutual defense clause or the EU’s 

“solidarity clause”? What might such a response entail, and is either 

institution equipped for such action? In Atlantic Storm, the relevance 

of a traditional security organization such as NATO to new types of 

health security threats was raised when Turkey called on NATO to 

invoke its Article 5 mutual defense clause and for NATO nations to 

provide vaccine to help the nation respond to the simulated outbreak 

in Istanbul. The Prime Minister of Italy, played in Atlantic Storm 

by Stefano Silvestri, responded to this request from Turkey in the 

following words:

I can understand why Turkey has asked for the activation of Article 5 

of NATO, Turkey not being yet inside [the] European Union. . . . The 

problem, of course, is that it is not necessarily a military response that 

we should give. We should give a political response to Turkey, for the 

moment. 

However, despite the view expressed by Mr. Silvestri, joint planning 

for traditional international security contingencies has occurred in 

NATO and other security alliances for decades. Planning with that 

degree of rigor and strategic and operational detail, but now for 

international response to epidemics, is definitely needed to cope 

with potential biothreats of international consequence. 

Transatlantic cooperation also is often the core of effective 

nonproliferation work, such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction 

Program, EU-Russia programs, or the G8 Global Partnership. 

However, biosecurity efforts often have remained orphans of such 

programs; they must now be given high priority and resources 

commensurate to the challenge.

According to Jan Eliasson, President of the UN General Assembly 

and former Swedish Ambassador to the United States, who played 

the Swedish Prime Minister in Atlantic Storm: “We live in a time 

of new threats. . . . What we now see is that health and security go 

together, so we have to combine them, and I think the lesson we 

should draw from this . . . is that we don’t have the organizational 

structures to deal with the new threats.”

More effective international planning also means achieving 

greater consensus on the science behind such efforts. In Atlantic 

Storm, participants were stunned to realize that many problems 
69

they had assumed would be resolved by straightforward scientific 

research were, in fact, complicated issues about which scientists 

from different countries and organizations disagreed. To resolve 

these issues, therefore, political decisions would ultimately need to 

be made. 

The Prime Minister of Poland, played in Atlantic Storm by the 

former Prime Minister of Poland, Jerzy Buzek, made this point very 

clear in the context of proposed vaccine dilution: “Scientists have 

different opinions, and we must make a political decision on this. . . .”

• Nations should not only strengthen their own national plans 

to respond to biothreats, they should ensure that such plans 

are coordinated with those of neighbors and major partners.

There is little mutual understanding among nations. For example, 

Atlantic Storm participants were surprised by the wide differences 

in national smallpox vaccine stockpiles. Some countries had enough 

for all their citizens, while others only had enough for 1 percent or 

even less. A former Dutch Interior Minister, who played the role of 

the Dutch Prime Minister during Atlantic Storm, stated: “When I 

saw the list [of vaccine stocks], that was a shock to me, how little 

prepared many countries are, even rich Western countries, to address 

this kind of problem.”

There are no accepted benchmarks to judge a country’s ability 

to handle the array of potential biothreats, but some countries 

have made major investments and some have made none. What 

Atlantic Storm illustrated—as do many real-world biosecurity crises 

such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or an influenza 

pandemic—is that it is in the explicit interests of the United States 

and other countries to ensure as few “weak links” as possible in the 

international community’s ability to mount an effective public health 

response. Health issues have become integral elements of national 

security. Developed countries are only as secure as the world’s 

weakest public health system. Moreover, their own health systems 

are largely unprepared for an intentional attack using infectious 

disease. 

• The United States should work with the international 

community to augment greatly the capacity of the World 

Health Organization (WHO) to respond to the health and 

medical consequences of biological attacks or pandemics.
70

In Atlantic Storm, leaders turned to WHO. Yet it is woefully 

underfunded and understaffed. As Gro Harlem Brundtland, former 

director general of WHO, commented during the exercise, that 

organization “is like a middle-sized hospital in England in total 

resources.” The scientists and health officials of WHO are highly 

capable, dedicated, and hard-working. But Atlantic Storm showed 

that even experienced politicians have unrealistic notions of what 

WHO would be able to deliver in a crisis, given its current budgetary, 

political, and organizational limits. Mr. Brundtland thus went on 

to conclude: “If leaders at this level are realizing that you have a 

crisis and that you need the WHO to be doing important roles, they 

also will [have to] support, with extra budgetary resources, what’s 

necessary.” 

The 2004-05 WHO budget for bioterrorism preparedness 

is estimated to be only $6.3 million. The entire 2004-05 WHO 

biennial budget is $2.8 billion, 70 percent of which comes from 

voluntary donations made by nations, international organizations, 

nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and private philanthropies. 

This is an impossible situation for an organization that must have 

the flexibility to respond rapidly to emerging epidemics, and raises 

questions about WHO’s capacity to respond to large disease epidemics in multiple locations around the world. The new International 

Health Regulations, approved in early 2005, may help bolster WHO’s 

clout internationally, but resources still will be severely limited. 

Moreover, some issues cannot be addressed even by a stronger 

WHO. During a global outbreak, for example, who would decide 

which countries should receive scarce vaccines or medicines? 

This is a life-or-death political decision—a “tragic choice”—that is 

beyond the brief of any international organization. During Atlantic 

Storm, principals hoped that WHO could serve as an independent 

“honest broker” for such politically sensitive decisions. In reality, 

such decisions are likely to be made only by the national leaders 

who control these scarce medical resources. The challenges facing 

international coordination of scarce medical resources are illustrated 

by the reality that EU nations have decided against a shared stockpile 

of smallpox vaccine because of this very issue—the difficulty of 

allocating scarce vaccine to multiple member states in an emergency. 
71

If EU nations—nations that are so closely aligned that most share 

the same currency—have been unable to agree on how to share 

a security asset as critical as smallpox vaccine, the prospects for 

broader international sharing mechanisms appear bleak indeed. 

• The very real prospect of bioterrorism requires new 

approaches, not only by doctors, scientists, and health care 

authorities, but by national security communities as well. 

Traditional concepts of deterrence and dissuasion must be 

tailored to the threat of asymmetric warfare by state or nonstate 

actors. Deterrence is unlikely to play the same role in managing 

the asymmetric bioweapons threat that it played in managing the 

apocalyptic Soviet threat. Dissuasion can be an effective complement 

to deterrence. Whereas deterrence focuses on stopping identifiable 

adversaries from employing real capabilities, dissuasion aims at 

stopping potential adversaries from ever developing such capabilities. Dissuasion could become an important new link in national 

security strategy by covering the grey zone between providing 

assurance to publics and partners, and deterring adversaries. In the 

early days of the Cold War, deterrence was a rather hazy concept. 

Once equipped with a full-fledged strategic theory, it acquired a role 

of central importance. The same may hold true for the concept of 

dissuasion today—but only if it, too, is equipped with the full set of 

analyses and calculations needed to bring it to life. 

These concepts require not only the trust of other partners, but 

also their active cooperation, which means they must be embedded in 

new diplomatic approaches. For instance, how should arms control 

treaties geared to states be adapted to nonstate actors? The global 

legal regime focuses on the activities of states, not subnational groups 

or individuals. It is weak with regard to monitoring and verification, 

and often fails to deal adequately with the significant differences 

between the types of weapons often lumped together under the term 

“weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). On the other hand, recent 

decades offer clear examples of successful diplomacy regarding 

nuclear weapons—Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Argentina, Brazil, 

and South Africa were all persuaded to abandon their nuclear 

weapons activities. In earlier decades, Germany, Japan, South Korea, 

and Turkey also were dissuaded from going nuclear by integration 
72

within stable alliances. We need to focus on how such efforts can be 

adapted to today’s more complex challenges.

• The absence of available medical countermeasures (i.e., 

medicines, vaccines, and diagnostic tests), the inadequacies of 

health information systems, and the lack of mass distribution 

systems for medicines and vaccines will limit leaders’ 

capacities to deal with large-scale epidemics. Much more can 

and should be done now to acquire these resources in order 

to give international leaders more effective response options 

when they are faced with a large-scale bioterrorist attack or 

natural pandemic.

Leaders would be far less inclined to pursue drastic actions if 

there were ready supplies of vaccine or medicine that could be used 

to cope with large pandemics—and effective systems to get those 

countermeasures to the people who need them. But there is currently 

a critical lack of new medicines and vaccines for all infectious 

diseases, not just those that could be used as weapons. National 

and international investments should be directed toward four areas. 

First, the United States and the international community need to 

create the capacity to develop and mass produce tens or hundreds of 

millions of doses of vaccines and medicines on short notice. Atlantic 

Storm leaders were stunned when they realized that many NATO 

and EU members—not to mention their poorer neighbors—did 

not have enough smallpox vaccine for their populations. The lack 

of sufficient vaccine stocks and the severely limited capacity to 

produce new vaccine eliminated many of the strategic options that 

the leaders could have used to respond to the epidemic, thus forcing 

them to consider measures such as closing borders and large-scale 

quarantine that could have had severe economic, social, and political 

repercussions. This lack of vaccine stocks and production capacity is 

not specific to smallpox; investment in the development of medicine 

and vaccines for virtually all infectious diseases has been declining 

for decades, resulting in pipelines that are producing only a trickle 

of new lifesaving products to counter infectious disease threats.

Stockpiling vaccines and medicines for specific biothreat agents 

such as smallpox is a good intermediate step. But the real answer 

is re-creating drug design and manufacture so we can develop 
73

whatever is needed on short notice. A comprehensive effort to 

render nations immune to the mass lethality that can be caused by 

disease must include an international “rapid reaction” capacity to 

produce and deliver vaccines and medicines against the plagues that 

can destabilize economies, disrupt societies, and kill millions.

Second, the United States and the international community 

should build medical and public health information systems that 

would provide leaders with enough situational awareness to make 

decisions and direct resources in response to a bioattack. In Atlantic 

Storm, leaders were provided with far more situational awareness 

than they would have had in a real crisis. They were given the 

locations and numbers of reported smallpox cases in almost real 

time, and they were constantly updated as information changed. 

If this had been a real bioattack or epidemic affecting cities in 

multiple countries, leaders would have had a great deal of trouble 

obtaining even this level of basic information. This would be true not 

just for top national leaders, but for political, scientific, and health 

decisionmakers at all levels of the response system. Additionally, 

this uncertainty will persist for weeks as the epidemic evolves, 

which is in contrast to many traditional “lights and sirens” security 

crises—such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), and 

others—in which it may take only hours or a few days to understand 

what has happened on the ground.

In the event of a bioattack, hospitals, health departments, 

emergency management agencies, local and regional political 

leaders, and national government agencies in most countries are not 

organized optimally to communicate with each other about location 

and number of victims; to request national vaccine, medicine, 

or equipment assets; or to plan for distribution of key resources. 

Information technology tools and platforms could be designed to 

share such information. If these systems are built correctly, they also 

will improve the routine functioning of hospitals. Given the early 

international ramifications of a bioattack as was seen in Atlantic 

Storm, these systems must include appropriate procedures for 

sharing information between nations.

Third, the United States and the international community need 

to develop and disseminate as appropriate those rapid point-of-care 

diagnostic technologies that allow doctors and nurses to identify 
74

victims of bioterror attacks easily. There are promising technologies 

in development, but plans for government investment in such 

technologies are not clear, and there is no strategic effort yet to drive 

the costs and simplicity down to a point where hospitals or doctors’ 

offices could begin to use them for both routine and emergency 

practice. 

Fourth, the United States and the international community need 

to develop the systems necessary to rapidly deliver vaccines and 

drugs to citizens in the event of a large-scale bioattack or a naturally 

occurring pandemic. Such systems would mean the difference 

between a community coping successfully with a crisis and a 

community whose efforts devolve to fighting over scarce resources. 

Only a few U.S. cities or states appear to be capable of distributing 

vital medical resources rapidly in a crisis, and we suspect the same 

is true in most other nations. 

Conclusion.

The world is on the cusp of exponential change in challenges 

posed by pathogens and their accessibility to state and nonstate 

actors. These challenges require actions beyond piecemeal extensions 

of current policies. They require something more holistic than diseasespecific stockpiles of medicines or vaccine. It is not just a matter of 

buying more vaccine or training more doctors. It is a question of 

how we integrate public health and national security communities 

in ways that allow us to deal with an unprecedented challenge.

Atlantic Storm showed that even experienced international 

leaders, when faced with an unfolding epidemic and the resulting 

uncertainty, would have limited options and stark choices, given 

the conditions that exist today. Preparation is essential: international 

leaders cannot be expected to develop the requisite response systems 

in the midst of a crisis. The exercise made clear that there is much that 

can be done to improve overall biosecurity for both intentional and 

natural epidemics—a critical lesson given the growing possibility 

of an avian influenza pandemic. Transatlantic and international 

initiatives to enhance biosecurity—the Global Health Security Action 

Group, the European Commission’s Heath Security Committee, 
75

the recently announced International Partnership on Avian and 

Pandemic Influenza—are beginning to gain prominence, but much 

more work is needed. The nations of the Atlantic Community should 

lead this effort and include as many partners as possible.

What is needed is a multilayered, comprehensive effort that seeks 

to render nations essentially immune to mass lethality and other 

destabilizing effects of the epidemics that would be caused by the 

most serious biosecurity threats. While no single tool holds the key 

to success, a variety of approaches could complement and reinforce 

each other. The core challenge in addressing bioterrorism (as also is 

true for naturally occurring epidemics) is to control and minimize 

the devastation of disease, thereby diminishing any reward that 

could result from pursuit of an intentional attack and the incentive 

for staging one.

Given the high level of concern in national capitals around the 

world regarding the avian flu crisis and potential for a human flu 

pandemic, imagine the impact on international affairs if flu of such 

menacing potential was being wielded by a thinking enemy. If 

the transatlantic community regarded biological weapons and the 

deliberate large-scale epidemics they would bring as one of the most 

grave and urgent challenges to international security—and if we were 

to respond with the level of resources and intellectual firepower that 

the free world brought to defeating Communism—then we could, in 

our generation, eliminate bioweapons as agents of mass lethality. 

Along the way we would, inevitably, also make profound 

discoveries about pathogenic microbes and the human response 

to infection which would lead to significant reduction—or even 

elimination—of the toll of death and suffering caused by naturally 

occurring infectious disease, which kills 1,500 people every hour and 

causes half the premature deaths in the developing world.

We can create the capacity to eliminate large epidemics of 

infectious disease in our lifetimes. We can enhance our security as we 

enhance our health. But we must first choose to take on this task—the 

post-9/11 equivalent of putting a man on the moon. It can happen. 

But it will require imagination, commitment—and leadership.

Additional information on the Atlantic Storm exercise may be 

found at www.atlantic-storm.org.
76

REFERENCES

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Dalgaard-Nielsen, A., and Hamilton, D. S., eds. Transatlantic Homeland Security

London: Routledge, 2005.

Enserink, M. “Influenza: Crisis Underscores Fragility of Vaccine Production 

System.” Science, 2004.

Frey, S. E., et al., “Clinical Responses to Undiluted and Diluted Smallpox Vaccine.” 

New Englland Journal of Medicine, April 25, 2002, Vol. 346, No. 17, pp. 1265–

1274.

Global Mercury Report available at www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/media/issues/global_

mercury/index.html. Accessed August 5, 2005.

Gouvras, G., “Policies in Place Throughout the World: Actions by the European 

Union.” International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 852, 2004, pp. 521–530.

Hamilton, D. S., and O’Toole, T., “Facing Up to the Bioterror Threat.” International 

Herald Tribune, January 31, 2005.

Lien, O., et al., Getting Medicine to Millions in a Public Health Emergency: Can Retailers 

Play a Role? Available at www.upmc-biosecurity.org/misc/medicine/medicine.html. 

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Lindstrom, G., “Protecting the European Homeland—The CBR Dimension.” EU 

Institute for Security Studies, July 2004.

Lutes, C., “The Role of Dissuasion in Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.” 

Strategic Insights, Vol. 3, No. 10, 2004. Available at www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si.

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Vaccine Stockpile to Stretch Supply” (press release). Bethesda, MD, March 28, 

2002. Available at www2.niaid.nih.gov/newsroom/releases/smallpox.htm. Accessed 

August 4, 2005.

Ostfield, M. L., “Bioterrorism as a Foreign Policy Issue,” SAIS Review, WinterSpring 2004, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 131-146.

Petro, J. B., and Relman, D., “Understanding Threats to Scientific Openness.” 

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Sagan, S., “Dissuasion and the NPT Regime: Complementary or Contradictory 

Strategies?” Strategic Insights, Vol. 3, No. 10, 2004. Available at www.ccc.nps.

navy.mil/si.

Smith, B. T., et al., “After-Action Report. “Navigating the Storm: Report and 

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Spellberg, B., et al. “Trends in Antimicrobial Drug Development: Implications for 

the Future.” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol. 38, 2004, pp. 1279–1286.

Sundelius, B., and Grönvall, J., “Strategic Dilemmas of Biosecurity in the European 

Union.” Biosecure Bioterror, 2004, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 17–23.

Talbot, T. R., et al. “Vaccination Success Rate and Reaction Profile with Diluted 

and Undiluted Smallpox Vaccine: A Randomized Controlled Trial. JAMA, 

September 8, 2004, Vol. 292, No. 10, pp. 1205–1212.

Tian J. et al., “Accurate Multiplex Gene Synthesis from Programmable DNA 

Microchips.” Nature, December 23, 2004, Vol. 432, pp. 1050-1054.

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of Bioterrorism—2004. Washington, DC: Trust for America’s Health, 2004. 

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79

AMERICAN REALIGNMENT IN EUROPE

Dr. Johan Lembke

The United States will restructure its forces and base structure 

in Europe as part of a global base realignment and closure program 

to better meet the reality of new threats. This will include a shift of 

bases eastward and the establishment of forward positions in the 

Black Sea region, in the southern Caucasus, and in Central Asia. 

At the strategic level, such realignment in Europe demonstrates 

America’s commitment to long-term security and regional stability 

further east and will increase America’s geostrategic flexibility. At 

the operational level, U.S. realignment could provide attractive 

basing and training opportunities, and support a shift towards 

smaller military installations, fewer support facilities and services, a 

rotational deployment strategy, and an information-age force.

Traditionally, a permanent military presence in Europe, including 

in Western Europe, has been construed as a political declaration 

to long-standing allies, including support for German-American 

relations. An American military presence in Europe represents, 

according to the traditional view, a continued commitment to its allies 

and provides a vehicle for direct influence with regard to the European 

Union (EU). Given such a history, a significant shift eastward could 

be interpreted as a quest for “coalitions of the willing” rather than 

a united Atlantic Alliance. On the other hand, such an eastward 

realignment could be seen as an effort by both the United States 

and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) more broadly 

to build coalitions outside Western Europe as needed responses 

to the complexity of security and international engagement in the 

21st century. U.S. realignment and the updating or establishment 

of military installations further east are not being debated intensely 

among the NATO partners. Rather, eastward alignment is viewed as 

a rational effort as part of the wider modernization of the alliance. 

NATO also remains an important vehicle for the United States to 

maintain some influence in Europe.
80

The Black Sea Region.

The Black Sea region, which has ancient links to the European 

mainland, is located geographically at the crossroads of continental 

Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia, and the Middle East. Moreover, 

from a historical perspective, the Black Sea region lies astride the 

junction of the Russian-Orthodox, Ottoman, and Persian Empires, 

and the great powers in Western Europe. The wider Black Sea region 

includes all the countries around the Black Sea (Romania, Bulgaria, 

Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey) plus Moldova and the 

South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia); and it serves 

as a gateway to the northern parts of the wider Middle East. The 

Black Sea region, located as it is along such critical East-West and 

North-South corridors, has reemerged as an area of vital strategic 

importance. It represents the new eastern border of the EU, and is 

arguably not only a relatively coherent geographical region but also 

is evolving into more of a distinct political regional construct. The 

strategic importance of the area can only increase as the EU enlarges 

further to the East. Thus the region is of vital strategic interest to the 

EU and to the United States as well.

Russia and Turkey have been and remain the predominant 

regional powers in the Black Sea region. The U.S. interest in the region 

has been stronger than that demonstrated by the EU. The western 

and southern shores of the Black Sea region, touching Romania, 

Bulgaria, and Turkey, represent the eastern and southeastern borders 

of NATO, a status that will soon apply to the EU as well. Russia still 

has significant interests in the Black Sea region. The influence and 

interest of both the EU and the United States from the Adriatic Sea 

to the Caspian Sea regions have increased and will continue to grow. 

This broad situation, entailing an enlargement from the Baltic Sea to 

the western shores of the Black Sea, fosters a geopolitical shift in the 

Black Sea region. This shift could include new forms of cooperation 

and competition among external powers, altered relations between 

regional powers and their relations, in turn, with middle powers, 

and emerging alliances and relations of countries in the region with 

external powers. Bulgaria and Romania were among seven countries 

to join NATO in March 2004. They signed the EU accession treaty 
81

in April 2005 and are on course for EU membership in 2007, which 

has been their major strategic goal. The membership of both NATO 

and the EU will help to integrate these countries more fully into the 

wider Euro-Atlantic community.

Romania and Bulgaria will make the Black Sea region a higher 

strategic priority for the EU and can function as a model of democratic 

transition, stability, and security enforcement for those areas further 

to the East. Enlargement to the Black Sea and the changing political 

geography also will pave the way for further extension of the 

East-West corridor and add a new component to the North-South 

corridor (Russia, Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf). The EU, which 

has been and still is less influential in the Black Sea area than Russia 

and the United States, will strengthen its strategic position in the 

Black Sea region and gain access to important navigable rivers that 

run into the Black Sea (the Danube, Dniestr, and Dnieper) through 

the membership of Romania and Bulgaria. This development could 

be significant also for the EU’s relations with Russia, Ukraine, the 

southern Caucasus, and the western Balkans. 

Turkey.

Turkey’s geopolitical location long has been and still is of strategic 

significance for both the EU and the United States. Throughout the 

Cold War era, Turkey has been an important security actor in Europe, 

as a staunch ally of the United States and Western Europe. The 

emerging security threats of the current era and the shifting regional 

focus on both sides of the Atlantic still call for close incorporation of 

Turkey into transatlantic security frameworks. 

On October 3, 2005, the EU decided to open accession talks with 

Turkey, yet the road ahead seems bumpy and uncertain for an 

eventual Turkish accession. This section deals with the implications 

for transatlantic security relations of Turkey’s efforts to gain EU 

membership. It scrutinizes the impact of success or failure of an 

eventual EU accession of Turkey on the emergent European security 

structures and on the future transatlantic security relationship. 

My thesis here is that, with Turkish accession negotiations now 

started, Turkey is likely to have a stronger voice in the future of the 
82

European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Turkish membership 

in the EU would provide a stronger connection between NATO 

and the EU/ESDP and help reinforce strategic relations between 

these transatlantic actors. The policy outcome of such a scenario is 

beneficial for all transatlantic parties involved: it is in the interest of 

Turkey from the perspective of increased political influence in both 

the development of ESDP and shaping of the dynamics of the region 

it is located in; it is in the interest of the EU from the perspective of 

having increased soft power in the Middle East and more effective 

and efficient response mechanisms in humanitarian crises on the 

European continent and elsewhere; and finally, it is in the national 

interest of the United States from the perspective of a more reliable 

strategic partnership and increased burden-sharing across the 

Atlantic. 
83

TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND STICKY INSTITUTIONS:

WHY THE TRANSATLANTIC SECURITY RELATIONSHIP 

ENDURES—AND SOME THOUGHTS ON FUTURE MISSIONS

Patrick B. Baetjer

The Future of Transatlantic Security Relations Conference that 

took place at Texas A&M University on March 8, 2006, afforded 

scholars and practitioners the opportunity to assess the status 

and strength of the relationship between Europe and the United 

States. Participants came from a variety of different organizations, 

countries, and theoretical persuasions, yet despite this diversity of 

viewpoints, five distinct and identifiable questions concerning the 

transatlantic relationship emerged. The interplay of discussions of 

history, current events, and future concerns about foreign, defense, 

and social policies among the United States, the European Union 

(EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia 

materialized as major areas of interest throughout the conference. 

How the EU would handle Turkey’s request to be a member of the 

EU, and the implications for NATO were major questions. Why 

NATO and the transatlantic relationship had endured beyond the 

end of the Cold War, and whether it would continue to do so were 

yet other areas of inquiry. Finally, NATO’s future roles and missions 

received significant attention as well.

Whither the Relationship between Nato, the EU, the United 

States, and Russia?

A major set of underlying questions included the future 

relationships among nations and institutions, especially NATO, 

the EU, the United States, Western and Eastern European states, as 

well as Russia and the Ukraine. Several participants warned that, 

with the current emphasis on terrorism and the Middle East, the 

danger exists that Russia and the transatlantic relationship might be 

ignored. One of the fundamental difficulties broached is how NATO 

and Russia deal with one another. After all, NATO was formed on 
84

April 4, 1949, as a measure of collective security against any potential 

Soviet aggression. The Soviet Union established its own alliance, the 

Warsaw Pact, in 1955 to counter NATO. Yet former Soviet satellites 

such as Hungary have joined NATO following the end of the Cold 

War. It remains unclear, however, whether the alliance’s continued 

expansion eventually will cause alarm in Moscow, and what the 

Russians response will be. Whether the Russians continue to see 

NATO as a threat is an open question.

Some scholars suggest offering Russia NATO membership as 

a means to tie former Cold War enemies together. Dr. Josef Joffe 

opposed the suggestion, asserting that Russia’s inclusion would 

unravel NATO. Joffe explained that, while Russia may not appear 

to harbor any renewed expansionist goals, the former Soviet satellite 

countries that have been free for less than 20 years remain suspicious 

about Russia’s future intentions. Membership in NATO represents 

a guarantee that Russia will not be able to dominate or exert 

overweening influence yet again. Furthermore, NATO membership 

is seen as a break with the Soviet past and identification with the 

west. Admitting Russia, in this view, would do much to undermine 

the importance of NATO to its newest Eastern European members.

As in the case of NATO expansion, the Russian response to 

the enlargement of the EU continues to be unclear. While the EU 

lacks the military component found in NATO, it still represents an 

organization spreading eastwards that Russia has little ability to 

influence. There clearly is no support for even mentioning Russia 

as a candidate for inclusion in the EU for several reasons. Europe 

appears to have pushed for expansion too fast and too hard, leaving 

its population feeling “exhausted with expansion.” Russia, once seen 

as on its way to becoming a democratic, law-abiding, capitalist state, 

may be backsliding toward authoritarianism and renewed state 

centralization. President Vladimir Putin has centralized a great deal 

of power in his hands, while eviscerating political opponents and 

the independent news media. The state, under the direction of Putin, 

has reseized various companies and industries from individuals like 

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, claiming that the sales of such assets in the 

1990s amounted to robbery, and that many companies owed taxes. 

Other commentators suggest that the seizures were aimed at quieting 
85

Russia’s wealthy oligarchs, who had begun to use their resources to 

oppose Putin politically. Russia also is engaged in a “dirty war” in 

Chechnya, utilizing a variety of tactics that grossly violate human 

rights. Russia as an EU candidate, therefore, may be well beyond the 

realm of current possibilities.

While there is a track record of previous cooperation between 

the EU and Russia, most notably in the efforts to convince Iran to 

suspend its uranium enrichment program, such cooperation does 

not mean that Russia wields any significant direct influence within 

the EU. Energy is the one area where Russia could seek to exert 

greater influence over the behavior of the EU. Its state-owned energy 

company, Gazprom, exports a great deal of natural gas to Europe, 

while European demand keeps rising. Some officials suggest that 

Gazprom could capture one-third of the European natural gas 

market in the next 10 years.1 Whether or not Russia could or would 

use energy to influence the expansion or behavior of the EU remains 

to be seen.

Relations between Russia and the United States have declined 

following a promising start. President George W. Bush famously 

stated that he looked into Putin’s eyes, saw his soul, and was 

convinced that he was a man who would encourage greater 

cooperation between the United States and Russia. For his part, Putin 

was among the first to call Bush following the September 11, 2001 

(9/11), terror attacks and offered whatever support he could provide. 

Russia was considered a staunch supporter of the War on Terror. Yet 

the United States has become frustrated by what it sees as Russia’s 

attempts to stifle the democratic Rose and Orange Revolutions in 

Georgia and Ukraine, respectively. Furthermore, having declared 

itself a supporter of the War on Terror, Russia recast the war in 

Chechnya as a counterterrorist effort, while continuing to violate 

human rights on a large scale. Putin’s efforts to wipe out the political 

opposition, his centralization of power, and his seizure of certain 

private companies all brought criticism from a disillusioned Bush 

White House. Recently, although the United States has supported 

the EU3 negotiations and Russia’s attempts to convince the Iranians 

to suspend their nuclear enrichment programs, these Western efforts 

have been frustrated by the Russians, who reportedly signaled that 
86

they would veto any sanctions or military action against Iran in the 

United Nations (UN) Security Council. 

It is unclear what Russia’s future role will be or how it will react 

to the growth of the EU and NATO. Under Putin, Russia has shown 

signs of wanting to exert greater influence on world affairs than 

under Boris Yeltsin. Some suggest that Russia’s attempts to influence 

events in former Soviet countries like Georgia and Ukraine indicate 

that Russia views NATO and the EU at least as competitors, if not 

threats. Continued diplomatic efforts are necessary to gauge Russian 

perceptions of threats and opportunities, and to make evident to 

Russia what the transatlantic alliance sees as its vital and important 

interests and values.

Whither the Relationship between NATO, the EU, the United 

States, and Turkey?

Much depends on how Europe handles its negotiations with 

Turkey on admittance to the EU. From Europe’s perspective, 

its citizens appear to have been exhausted by the strains of rapid 

expansion. In some European countries, there is an undercurrent 

of skepticism concerning the entire EU concept. The rejection of the 

EU draft constitution in some countries was taken as a sign of this 

exhaustion. Long-time members of the EU have expressed concern 

that the newer Eastern European members, especially Poland, would 

flood the Western European members with poor, uneducated, and 

unemployed immigrants. They express fear that this would burden 

the much-beloved social welfare systems of many of these countries, 

while driving up the unemployment rate within each country. While 

this has not occurred so far, the concern is very much alive. In the 

case of Turkey, it is a much larger and a far poorer country than the 

EU previously has admitted.

The debate over the use of Islamic headscarves in French schools, 

the violent riots outside of Paris, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the 

rail bombings in Madrid, and the bombings in London raise questions 

for many Europeans as to whether Muslim immigrants are willing 

to assimilate or even capable of doing so. Skeptics point to the large 

Muslim ghettos in Holland and France. Furthermore, with the rise 
87

of parties like the National Front in France and the British National 

Party, anti-immigrant feelings appear to be intensifying in Europe.

Concerned European political elites wonder whether Turkey, if 

admitted, would clamor for a voting system that favors population 

size over other factors. These elites fear that Turkey would call for an 

EU Assembly with a weighted voting system that gave more votes 

to the more populous member countries at the expense of the aging 

nations, thereby reducing the influence and status of long-time EU 

stalwarts such as France, Germany, and Italy.

Yet European concerns center on more than just what could 

happen if Turkey gained entry. Turkey was confronted with a 

whole raft of reforms that it needed to implement in order to begin 

accession negotiations. There is little evidence that Turkey has 

made much headway with most of the proposed reforms, and there 

are some indications that the country has moved in the opposite 

direction. Prognosticators suggest that should Prime Minister Recep 

Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK) win the next 

election, he very well might move to weaken laws that have helped 

make Turkey a secular state.2 Europeans see all of these trends, 

combined with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, as worrisome and 

threatening to their national security and politics, and even to their 

fundamental social fabric. In short, critics contend that Turkey has 

not demonstrated an improved respect for human rights, that abuses 

by the security forces abound, and that the state may try to pass an 

anti-terror bill that would curtail free speech severely and expand 

police powers. Considering also several troubling interactions with 

Hamas, Syria, and Iran, many Europeans do not believe that Turkey 

has held up its end of the bargain.

Turkey argues that it has made progress, and that it has a lot 

to offer the EU. Panelist Oya Dursun suggested that it would be a 

public relations coup for the EU to admit a large Muslim nation to 

the club. She explained that much of the Muslim world sees the EU 

as a primarily white Christian organization, fueling the belief that 

the West and the Islamic world are headed for a clash of civilizations. 

Admittance would dissipate this belief. Turkey could act as a credible 

arbiter on behalf of Europe in efforts to bring the Israeli/Palestinian 

conflict to a close and could provide much-needed cultural sensitivity 

to issues involving the Muslim world and Europe.
88

Ms. Dursun suggested that Turkey would be content even if 

the EU did not grant the nation full member status. She envisioned 

some kind of “privileged partner” status for Turkey should full 

membership not be awarded. Ms. Dursun did not touch on the 

economic benefits of bringing Turkey into the EU. Much of Western 

Europe is aging, and it is incapable of replenishing its work force 

with young people. In time, Western Europe will be faced with 

declining productivity coupled with soaring social welfare costs of 

the aging populace. Turkey has a number of young unemployed 

potential workers who are mostly enthusiastic about integration 

into Europe, and who are typically educated and embrace the 

essence of the Western social contract necessary for living and 

working in a secular state. Like it or not, Europe cannot follow 

anti-immigration policies while holding on to expansive—and 

expensive—welfare programs. Turkey’s young and underemployed 

population could hold the key.

Relations between Turkey and the United States have been up 

and down, with the low point coming in 2003 when Turkey refused 

to grant overflight rights or to permit a U.S. armored division 

to travel across Turkish territory to attack northern Iraq. Turkey 

remains very concerned about the situation in Iraq, fearing that the 

autonomous Kurdish region near Kirkuk eventually may push for 

independence. With between 6 and 12 million Kurds in Turkey, the 

state is concerned that the Kurds might try to carve out a larger state 

that would include northern Iraq and part of southern Turkey. The 

existence of a violent Kurdish separatist movement, the PKK, only 

exacerbates these concerns. Turkey is wary of the close relationship 

that has developed between the United States and the Kurds, 

beginning with Operation PROVIDE COMFORT in the 1990s and 

continuing with the joint operations launched by the U.S. military 

and the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq today. Moreover, instability in 

Iraq brings smugglers, arms dealers, drug runners, and would-be 

insurgents across Turkey’s border.

The United States, like the EU, has expressed concern over 

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s efforts to weaken the laws that 

have been in place since Ataturk to ensure a secular state. Like the 

Europeans, the United States deplores the continued human rights 

abuses and the repression of the Kurds. Yet the United States faces 
89

a conundrum with regard to Turkey’s government. Though it is an 

avowed secular democracy, the Turkish military has intervened 

at times when Islamist candidates won elections, most recently in 

1980 and 1997. While highly undemocratic, military interference in 

national politics has ensured the survival of a secular Turkish state. 

Complicating matters further, the same military that is the ultimate 

guarantor of secularism also has been implicated in some of the worst 

human rights abuses in Turkey. Thus questions about the Kurds, 

democracy, human rights, and the denial of overflight rights have 

led to a rocky relationship between the United States and Turkey.

Should the EU deny Turkey admission, it would likely impinge 

on NATO in some fashion. Turkey became a member of NATO on 

February 18, 1952, and maintains the largest number of troops among 

member states after the United States. Turkey proved a staunch ally 

throughout the Cold War, even allowing the United States to station 

Jupiter nuclear missiles on its territory. Yet rejection from the EU likely 

would strain Turkey’s relations with NATO’s European members. 

Turkey might prove less willing to contribute to NATO operations, 

particularly if it is European states which are pushing for a particular 

deployment. It is unlikely that a rejection from the EU would 

encourage Turkey to sever its ties with NATO, but it would be likely 

to make the country less enthusiastic about NATO deployments and 

cause further strains within the transatlantic alliance. Big questions 

therefore remain as to the potential for future improvements in 

Transatlantic-Middle Eastern regional relationships, as well as the 

possibilities for a significant Turkish role in improving ties among 

the Islamic and Western nations and cultures.

Whither NATO and the Transatlantic Relationship?

The conference panelists reached a general consensus about why 

the alliance has lasted and the prospects for its future. In general, 

the participants concluded that relatively close collaboration would 

continue into the future, this being the result of existing political 

and security institutions. Dr. Christopher Layne was the one noted 

exception; he viewed institutions as means by which the United States 

sought to impose its hegemony on the rest of the world. Yet nearly 

every panelist at some point acknowledged that such institutions had 
90

bound Europe and the United States together, and that NATO was 

an example of such an institution. This is not to say that participants 

agreed on exactly what the vital institutions were, or on whether the 

partnership needed improving.

Dr. Michael Brenner emphasized that Europe and the United 

States shared social institutions that accounted for the ongoing 

cooperation. Dr. Guillaume Parmentier argued that institutions 

explained past collaborative efforts, but that in the future, NATO 

should redefine itself as a coalition-enabling organization, and that 

another institution should be created to facilitate understanding 

between Europe and the United States. Dean Steinberg argued that 

U.S. policy had done much to strain institutions, but that U.S. foreign 

policy appeared to be improving in that regard. Dr. Josef Joffe likened 

the current incarnation of NATO to that of a market or bazaar, a place 

with many floors and a menu of capabilities to meet the myriad new 

challenges that NATO was not expected to meet during the Cold 

War. Dr. Joffe cautioned observers not to expect NATO to engage 

in large-scale conventional warfare, as it was originally founded 

for, but rather to focus more on humanitarian missions and perhaps 

stability operations.

Dr. Michael Desch pressed Dr. Joffe on the utility of such an 

organization, likening NATO to the New York City social registry, 

an antiquated club that has little relevant impact. Dr. Joffe replied 

that, while the capabilities of the registry were not what they once 

were, there was still a large number of people who wanted to be a 

part of it. NATO’s most important feature may be that it is seen as a 

forum for the United States and Europe to discuss strategic issues, 

as well as for other nations, e.g., the Eastern Europeans, who still 

clamor to be a part of such exchanges.

The panelists touched on an ongoing debate in the academic world 

about the utility of institutions in international politics. To those 

who believe that institutions bring stability and lessen the chance 

for conflict between nations, institutions enable the predominant 

nations to “lock in” rules that all nations will agree to play by. Weaker 

nations agree to these rules because such rules restrain the power 

of the stronger nations and greatly decrease the chance that weaker 

nations will be abandoned or dominated.3 Furthermore, institutions 

give weaker states a say and a stake in the international order above 
91

what their own relative power normally would enable them to 

have. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once observed, 

“When we built the Atlantic alliance in the 1940s, Europe was very 

weak. And yet we gave it a status and a degree of participation [in 

the alliance] that went beyond what it could have demanded for 

itself. This should be one of our objectives with Russia.”4

Dominant nations voluntarily agree to restraints on their power 

because, otherwise, the costs of staying dominant are extremely high, 

and weaker nations have an incentive to move to counterbalance 

them, thus decreasing the period of dominance of the stronger. 

NATO represents one such institution. Dr. Joffe commented, “The 

genius of American diplomacy was building institutions, from the 

UN to the IMF [International Monetary Fund], from NATO [to] the 

WTO. . . . They advanced American interests by serving those of 

others.”5

Indeed, Dr. Joffe appears to argue that institutions are a far better 

means than soft power to ameliorate the points of conflict between 

Europe and the United States. Soft power, the attractiveness of a 

nation’s culture and ideals, provides no sure access to increased 

influence over an admiring country. Joffe asserts, “Soft power does 

not necessarily increase the world’s love for America. It is still 

power, and it can make enemies.”6 Soft power can convey a sense 

of cultural dominance, and he suggests that this could lead to a 

reactive, resentful government policy by a dominated party. One 

example is the “cultural exception” that France wrung from the EU 

free trade rule-makers in 1993. An EU state may go against free trade 

policy if that state seeks to protect or promote an endangered aspect 

of its culture. This was seen widely as a slight directed at the United 

States, with some Europeans suggesting that American culture was 

“hyped or heisted”.7

Institutions have an additional advantage in that once created, 

member states find it very difficult to disentangle themselves from 

them. They provide states with a platform on which to conduct 

business with other states. John Ikenberry dubbed this concept 

institutional “stickiness.”8 States become so bound by institutions 

that they find it difficult to leave. Moreover, they find it difficult 

to gain an advantage over other member states. Ikenberry writes, 

“When political institutions are deeply entrenched and difficult 
92

to overturn or replace, this also reduces the returns on power and 

increases the continuity of the existing order.”9 Stickiness and the 

reduced return on power provide a plausible explanation for why 

NATO and the transatlantic relationship have endured beyond the 

end of the Cold War.

What Is NATO’s Future Role and What Will Its Mission Be?

Conference participants came to a variety of conclusions about 

NATO’s future roles and missions. Dr. Parmentier envisioned NATO 

as a coalition-enabling organization in which member states that had 

the will and capacity to act to confront an agreed-upon challenge 

could self-organize and mutually coordinate. He did not, however, 

indicate what measures could be taken to prevent the emergence of 

future “coalitions of the willing” that might enrage member states, 

as with what happened regarding Iraq.

Colonel William Gallagher’s focus on the training of Eastern 

European militaries suggests that NATO could have a role in 

providing the necessary training for former Eastern Bloc countries 

who want to professionalize and modernize their armed forces. Such 

training would also establish contacts within the various militaries, 

opening lines of communication that could prove valuable if a 

crisis develops. General Ivany stated that the democratization of 

former Soviet satellite armies is certainly an important and ongoing 

mission.

Dr. Joffe seemed to suggest that NATO is the perfect institution 

through which to lock in the democratic advances in former Eastern 

Bloc countries, and that the alliance provides them with a measure 

of assurance that Russia can no longer wield the coercive influence 

over them that it once did. Furthermore, NATO features a number of 

capabilities that make it the perfect complement to the overwhelming 

technological power of the United States. As a “bazaar,” NATO has 

experience with stability operations, providing security for elections, 

means for disarming rivals, and humanitarian assistance. NATO may 

not be able to fight the conventional war it was originally designed 

for, but its capabilities are still useful.

Finally, Dr. David McIntyre and Colonel Randy Larsen’s Atlantic 

Storm and Dark Winter simulations revealed just how unprepared 
93

the transatlantic alliance is for a biological attack or outbreak. 

Coordination and pooling of necessary resources were revealed to 

be nearly nonexistent. The underlying message was that this could 

be an area that NATO focuses on, but, in that case, there is a great 

deal of planning that needs to begin immediately.

Conclusion.

The conference participants’ presentations generally focused 

on four main questions: What will relations between the EU, the 

United States, NATO, and Russia look like; what will relations 

between Turkey, the EU, the United States, and NATO look like; 

why has NATO and the transatlantic partnership endured and will 

it continue to do so; and what are NATO’s future roles and missions? 

Relations with Russia will depend largely on whether Russia views 

the enlargement of the EU and NATO as a threat. Relations with 

Turkey depend heavily on whether it is admitted to the EU. NATO 

has endured largely because international institutions have value 

and because of the concept of stickiness. Finally, NATO will play 

a variety of roles, but it will never again resemble the conventional 

warfighting organization it was designed to be at the onset of the 

Cold War.

ENDNOTES

1. “Who’s Afraid of Gazprom?” The Economist, May 6-12, 2006, p. 61.

2. “Flying in the Wrong Direction,” The Economist, May 6-12, 2006, p. 51.

3. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the 

Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 

p. 258.

4. Quoted in Fareed Zakaria, “America’s New Balancing Act,” Newsweek,

August 6, 2001.

5. Ibid.

6. Josef Joffe, “The Perils of Soft Power,” New York Times Magazine, May 14, 

2006.

7. Ibid.

8. Ikenberry, p. 5.

9. Ibid., p. 266.

95

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES

PATRICK B. BAETJER is originally from Unionville, Pennsylvania. 

He worked in the United States Senate before moving to the Center 

for Strategic and International Studies as a Research Assistant to the 

Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy. Mr. Baetjer’s work focused on 

the Middle East, especially Iran and Iraq, terrorism, and military 

force transformation. He assisted in the research and writing of Iraqi 

Security Forces: A Strategy for Success by Dr. Anthony Cordesman. 

Mr. Baetjer is a student in the George Bush School of Government 

and Public service pursuing a degree in International Affairs. He 

received a B.A. in History from Davidson College. 

MICHAEL BRENNER teaches American foreign policy, international 

relations theory, international political economy, and national 

security at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs 

at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been a consultant with the 

U.S. Department of Defense and the Foreign Service Institute and 

has published a number of works, including Europe’s New Security 

Vocation, Reconcilable Differences: US-French Relations in the New 

Era with Guillaume Parmentier, Terms of Engagement, The US and 

European Security Identity, and “Kritischer Dialog oder Konstruktives 

Engagement?” Internationale Politik (Bonn, September 1997). Dr. 

Brenner received his doctorate in political science from the University 

of California at Berkeley.

JOSEPH R. CERAMI was appointed as a Lecturer in National Security 

Policy for the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas 

A&M University, in 2001. During a 30-year military career, Colonel 

Cerami served in Germany, the Republic of Korea, and the United 

States as a Field Artillery officer, operational planner, and strategist. 

His last assignment was as the Chairman of the Department of 

National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania, from 1998 to 2001. From 1993 to 1998, he 

served on the faculty there as Director of International Security 

Studies. From 1980 to 1983, he was Assistant Professor of Political 

Science at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, where 
96

he taught International Relations, and Politics and Government. 

Colonel Cerami has published numerous articles on defense policy 

and, along with Colonel James F. Holcomb, Jr., he is co-editor of the 

Army War College Guide to Strategy. He has a B.S. in Engineering from 

the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, an M.A. in Government 

from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MMAS in Theater 

Operations from the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort 

Leavenworth, Kansas. He is also a graduate of the Army War College. 

In 1995 Colonel Cerami was awarded a Certificate from the John F. 

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Program for 

Senior Officials in National Security. 

RICHARD A. CHILCOAT retired from the U.S. Army after 42 years 

of active military service on September 1, 2000. During his military 

career, he served in a variety of leadership positions, including Chief 

of Staff, 3d Infantry Division, in Germany; Executive Assistant to 

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Deputy 

Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of 

Staff for Operations and Plans; and Senior Speechwriter to the Army 

Chief of Staff, General John A. Wickham, Jr. He served as Assistant 

to the Academy Dean, Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, and 

member of the Academy Athletic Board at the U.S. Military Academy. 

In 1994, Lieutenant General Chilcoat became the 43d Commandant 

of the U.S. Army War College. In 1997, he was appointed ninth 

President of the National Defense University by the Chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving until July 7, 2000. On July 1, 2001, 

he was named Dean of the George Bush School of Government and 

Public Service, at Texas A&M University. Currently, he serves as a 

member of the Board of Advisors, CIA University, Class Trustee of 

the Association of Graduates, U.S. Military Academy, and member 

of the Board of Directors, National Defense University Foundation. 

Lieutenant General Chilcoat received his M.B.A. from Harvard 

Business School and B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy. He is an 

honorary graduate of the U.S. Army War College. 

READ DEAL joined the Bush School from the defense industry where 

he worked as a Senior Business Analyst at Northrop Grumman 

Corporation. He began work for Northrop Grumman upon 
97

receiving his M.B.A. from the Cox School of Business at SMU and 

his bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College. Mr. Deal is a master’s 

degree candidate in the Bush School International Affairs program 

studying national security issues.

MICHAEL DESCH was named the first holder of the Robert M. 

Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making 

at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at 

Texas A&M University in 2004. Prior to that, he was Professor and 

Director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International 

Commerce at the University of Kentucky. From 1993 through 1998, 

he was Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the Olin 

Institute. He teaches courses in national security policy, political 

theory and international relations, and democracy and American 

foreign policy. 

ALAN DOBSON taught at the University of Wales Swansea from 

1978 to 1999 in the Department of Political Theory and Government. 

In 1999 he was appointed to the Chair of Politics at Dundee and 

in 2003 became Director of the Faculty’s Institute for Transatlantic 

European and American Studies. Dr. Dobson is a Fellow of the 

Royal Historical Society and for several years a Fellow of the Royal 

Aeronautical Society. In 1997 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the 

Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, and in October 2005 held the 

Lenna Fellowship at the University of St. Bonaventure, New York. 

Dr. Dobson has published three books on Anglo-American relations 

and two on the international airline system, co-authored a book on 

U.S. foreign policy, and edited a collection of essays on the Cold 

War. He has published numerous articles in leading international 

relations and history journals. Dr. Dobson received his doctorate at 

the University of Durham and an MSc in International Politics at the 

University of Southampton.

OYA DURSUN is an Assistant Instructor in the Department of 

Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching 

experience includes positions as Adjunct Professor in the Department 

of Political Science and International Relations in Boğaziçi University 

in Turkey, Summer 2005; and as a Visiting Professor in the Department 
98

of International Relations at Lodz Academy of International Studies 

in Lodz, Poland, Spring 2005. Ms. Dursun has been published by the 

Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs, the United Nations 

Press, and the Referans Gazetesi, and has several other publications 

accepted for publication by the French Politics, the LBJ Journal of Public 

Affairs, and the EU Center of Excellence at Texas A&M University. Ms. 

Dursun also received the Patterson Fellowship at the University of 

Texas at Austin, 2005; was in the Erasmus-Socrates Scholar Program, 

2005; and had a Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) 

fellowship for studying in Germany, 2004. She is a Ph.D. candidate on 

comparative politics, international relations, and American politics 

at the University of Texas at Austin.

JEFFREY A. ENGEL is Assistant Professor, Bush School, where he 

teaches courses in American foreign policy and the evolution of 

international strategy. Before coming to the Bush School, he was a 

lecturer in History and International Relations at the University of 

Pennsylvania (2003-04), a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford 

College (2004), and an Olin Postdoctoral Fellow in International 

Security Studies at Yale University (2001-03). Dr. Engel edited a 

collection detailing the local impact of Cold War diplomacy and 

currently is completing a book on aircraft sales, export controls, and 

trading with adversaries during the Cold War. Dr. Engel received 

his Ph.D. in American history from the University of WisconsinMadison.

WILLIAM J. GALLAGHER is the Chief of Staff for Strategic Operations, Multi-National Force-Iraq and is assigned in Baghdad. 

Previously, he was the Chief of the Initiatives Group for the U.S. 

Army, Europe, located in Heidelberg, Germany. Colonel Gallagher 

has served over 25 years in a variety of command and staff 

assignments as an Army infantry officer. He was a National Security 

Fellow at Harvard University and is a graduate of West Point. 

Colonel Gallagher holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, 

an MBA, and an MA in leadership development.

KLAUS-PETER GOTTWALD has been Deputy Chief of Mission of 

the German Embassy in Washington since July 7, 2003. Just before 
99

his appointment to Washington, Mr. Gottwald was a fellow at the 

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University. 

His most recent position at the Foreign Office in Berlin was as director 

for North America from 1998 to 2002. At the Foreign Office, he also 

served as a deputy spokesman for former Foreign Minister HansDietrich Genscher and as deputy director in the arms control and 

disarmament division. Overseas, Mr. Gottwald served in London 

from 1993 to 1998, first on secondment to the British Foreign and 

Commonwealth Office, policy planning staff, and then as head of the 

press and public information department of the German Embassy. 

Additional foreign assignments include the political department of 

the German Embassy in Washington, where he worked on political/

military affairs and arms control issues from 1987 to 1990; head of the 

press department of the German Embassy in Helsinki; and work with 

the German UNESCO delegation in Paris. Mr. Gottwald joined the 

German Foreign Service in 1977. Prior to his career there, he worked 

as head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 

in the UNDP’s regional office in Kaduna, northern Nigeria. Mr. 

Gottwald was educated at the universities of Mannheim, Frankfurt, 

and Konstanz (degree in social sciences/public administration) and 

holds an M.A. in international relations from Syracuse University.

DANIEL HAMILTON is the Richard von Weizsäcker Professor and 

Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze 

School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins 

University; and Executive Director of the American Consortium 

on EU Studies (ACES), a cooperative venture among five major 

universities in the nation’s capital designated by the European 

Commission as the EU Center of Excellence, Washington, DC. Dr. 

Hamilton is publisher of Transatlantic: Europe, America & the World, 

the Center’s bimonthly magazine on transatlantic issues. He leads the 

international policy work of the Johns Hopkins-based U.S. National 

Center of Excellence on Homeland Security, awarded by the U.S. 

Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Hamilton has held a variety 

of senior positions in the U.S. Department of State, including Deputy 

Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, responsible for NATO, 

OSCE, and transatlantic security issues, Balkan stabilization, and 

Northern European issues; U.S. Special Coordinator for Southeast 
100

European Stabilization; Associate Director of the Policy Planning 

Staff; and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador and U.S. 

Embassy in Germany. From 1990 to 1993, he was Senior Associate 

on European-American relations at the Carnegie Endowment for 

International Peace. From 1982 to 1990, he was Deputy Director of 

the Aspen Institute Berlin. Dr. Hamilton has a Ph.D. and M.A. with 

distinction from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International 

Studies, with a concentration in U.S. Foreign Policy, European 

Studies, and International Economics. He was awarded a Doctorate 

of Humanities h.c. by Concordia College in May 2002. He received 

his B.S.F.S magna cum laude at Georgetown University’s School of 

Foreign Service, and studied at the University of Konstanz and at St. 

Olaf College.

CHARLES HERMANN is a professor of Political Science at Texas 

A&M University. In addition to serving as the Interim Associate 

Dean for Academic Programs and Associate Dean for International 

Affairs of the Bush School, Dr. Hermann teaches the gateway course 

for the International Affairs Track—Problems in Contemporary U.S. 

Foreign Policy. In 1969, he left Princeton University to serve on the 

National Security Council staff under Dr. Henry Kissinger. Before 

coming to Texas A&M in 1995, Dr. Hermann served as Director of 

the Mershon Center, a think tank on international security and public 

policy located at Ohio State University, where he also spent several 

years as Associate Provost for International Affairs. Dr. Hermann 

is a past president of the International Studies Association and a 

principal investigator for research grants from such sources as the 

National Science Foundation, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament 

Agency, the Department of Defense, the Hewlett Foundation, and 

the MacArthur Foundation. An active scholar in the fields of foreign 

policy, national security policy, and group decisionmaking, his 

recent publications include the editorship of The American Defense 

Annual and New Directions in Foreign Policy. Dr. Hermann received 

his Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University.

ROBERT IVANY became the eighth president of the University of St. 

Thomas on July 1, 2004. Prior to his retirement from the Army with the 

rank of Major General, Dr. Ivany was Commandant of the U.S. Army 
101

War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There for 3 years, he instituted 

programs to develop the next generation of military and civilian 

leaders from the United States and 42 foreign countries to meet the 

challenges of cultural change, organizational transformation, and a 

drastically altered national security environment. During his various 

commands as an armored cavalry officer, he led soldiers in the United 

States, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Federal Republic of Germany, and 

Vietnam, where he was wounded in action and decorated for valor. 

During his distinguished Army career, he assisted several nations 

in the transformation of their armed forces. In 1990, Dr. Ivany was 

the first senior military officer invited to Hungary to contribute 

to the democratization of their defense establishment. He lived in 

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, advising military and civilian leaders 

on the modernization of their military forces following Operation 

DESERT STORM. In Kuwait, he headed the American effort with 

a team of 45 advisors managing a $1.2 billion program to improve 

their education, training, and logistics. Dr. Ivany also served in a 

number of unique positions including the Army Aide to the President 

of the United States from 1984 to 1986 and an assistant professor 

of history and assistant football coach at the Military Academy at 

West Point. As the Commanding General of the Military District of 

Washington, he directed a diverse organization of 5,500 civilian and 

military employees based on seven installations in three states and 

the District of Columbia. In addition to earning a B.S. degree from 

the U.S. Military Academy, Dr. Ivany received a Ph.D. in History 

from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

JOSEF JOFFE is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. 

Previously he was columnist/editorial page editor of Süddeutsche 

Zeitung (1985–2000). Dr. Joffe’s essays and reviews have appeared 

widely in such publications as the New York Review of Books, Times 

Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New 

Republic, Weekly Standard, and the Prospect (London). He is a regular 

contributor to metropolitan daily newspapers in the United States and 

Britain. Dr. Joffe’s second career has been in academia. Currently, he 

is adjunct professor of political science at Stanford, where he was the 

Payne Distinguished Lecturer (1999-2000). He also is a distinguished 

fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at 
102

Stanford. In 1990–91, Dr. Joffe taught at Harvard, where he is also an 

associate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. He was a visiting 

lecturer in 2002 at Dartmouth College and in 1998 at Princeton 

University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He was a professorial lecturer 

at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1982–

84. Dr. Joffe’s scholarly work has appeared in many books and in 

journals such as Foreign Affairs, the National Interest, International 

Security, and Foreign Policy, as well as in professional journals 

in Germany, Britain, and France. He is the author of The Limited 

Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance and 

coauthor of Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe. 

His most recent book is The Future of International Politics: The Great 

Powers (1998); forthcoming is Über-Power: The Imperial Temptation in 

American Foreign Policy, to be published by W.W. Norton. Among 

his many awards are honorary doctoral degrees in humane letters 

from Swarthmore College in 2002 and Lewis and Clark College in 

2005; the Theodor Wolff Prize (journalism), Ludwig Börne Prize 

(essays/literature), and the Federal Order of Merit, Germany. Dr. 

Joffe received his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

SAMUEL A. KIRKPATRICK is Executive Associate Dean for 

Academic Affairs and Management and Executive Professor at 

the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M 

University. Immediately prior to rejoining Texas A&M, he was a 

Senior Fellow at the American Association of State Colleges and 

Universities in Washington, DC, where he advised university 

presidents, and engaged in public university projects relevant to 

the metropolitan mission, public engagement, civic education, and 

cultural and economic development outreach. Dr. Kirkpatrick is 

also a Senior Fellow at Strategic Initiatives, Inc., where he provides 

consultative services in strategic planning, continuous quality 

improvement, change management, and technology innovations for 

nonprofit organizations. In addition, he serves as an advisor/Senior 

Executive to boards in the areas of fundraising and strategic planning 

and as an independent management consultant. Dr. Kirkpatrick 

has served as the president of two public universities that offer 

programs in the arts, sciences, and professions to more than 25,000 
103

degree students and large numbers of nondegree students served 

by over 2,500 faculty and staff. Dr. Kirkpatrick received a Ph.D. and 

M.A. in political science from the Pennsylvania State University and 

a bachelor’s degree and honorary doctorate in public service from 

Shippensburg University.

RANDALL J. LARSEN is the Director of the Institute for Homeland 

Security and a Senior Associate at the Center for Biosecurity, 

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A retired U.S. Air Force 

colonel, he previously served as the Chairman, Department of 

Military Strategy and Operations, at the National War College in 

Washington, DC. Since 2001 he has frequently served as an expert 

witness for the U.S. Congress on issues ranging from biological and 

nuclear terrorism to spending priorities and national strategies for 

homeland security. In March 2005, Colonel Larsen designed and led 

a 2-day workshop on the threat of nuclear and biological terrorism 

for the House Homeland Security Committee. For more than 3 years, 

he has served as the homeland security consultant to CBS News, and 

is also the co-host of public radio’s weekly show, Homeland Security: 

Inside and Out. Colonel Gallagher’s book, Our Own Worst Enemy, will 

be published by Warner books in 2007.

CHRISTOPHER LAYNE joined the Bush School Faculty in the Fall 

2005. His fields of interest are international relations theory, U.S. 

foreign policy, and strategic studies. Previously, he has taught at 

the School of International Studies, University of Miami; the Naval 

Postgraduate School; and in the Department of Political Science, 

University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Layne has held numerous 

research positions and has been the recipient of a Research and 

Writing Grant in Global Security from the John D. and Catherine T. 

MacArthur Foundation, and also has received research grants from 

the Smith Richardson Foundation and from the Earhart Foundation. 

Dr. Layne is the author of The Peace of Illusions: American Grand 

Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Cornell University Press, 2006). He 

practiced law for 10 years in Los Angeles, California, and served 

as law clerk to the late Richard A. Gadbois, Jr., U.S. District Judge 

for the Central District of California. Dr. Layne received his Ph.D. 

in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, a 
104

diploma in historical studies from Cambridge University, an LL.M. 

in international law from the University of Virginia Law School, a 

J.D. from the University of Southern California Law School, and a 

B.A. (Cum Laude) in International Relations from the University of 

Southern California. 

JOHAN LEMBKE is Senior Lecturer at the George Bush School of 

Government and Public Service, teaching courses on transatlantic 

relations and the European Union to students in its master’s degree 

in international affairs program, and Director of the European 

Union Center at the Texas A&M University in College Station. Dr. 

Lembke most recently served as Associate Professorial Lecturer at 

the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington 

University in Washington, DC, where he taught undergraduate and 

graduate courses in European foreign policy, European economic 

and security policy, high technology policy, international corporate 

strategies, international political economy, transatlantic relations, 

and specialized courses on the Baltic Sea region. Dr. Lembke received 

his doctorate in international political economy and political science 

from Stockholm University in Sweden, where he also taught 

International Relations. He also received a B.Sc. in security studies 

and political science and B.A. in romance languages from Stockholm 

University.

JAY LOCKENOUR is a Professor of History at Temple University 

in Philadelphia. He teaches courses on German history, modern 

European social and military history, and history and film. He has 

worked on a wide range of subjects, from German political culture 

and national identity, to POW and veterans’ affairs, to the role of 

film in illuminating historical consciousness. Dr. Lockenour recently 

completed a book project that combines many of these interests by 

examining the material and ideological effects of World War II and its 

aftermath on former German officers living in the Federal Republic 

of Germany. He has two ongoing projects: a study of German war 

films that examines their role in shaping public memory of World 

War II, and a study of the military career and anti-Semitic politics 

of Erich Ludendorff. Dr. Lockenour has published several works, 

including Soldiers as Citizens: German Veterans in the Federal Republic, 
105

1945-1955; “The Rift in Our Ranks: The German Officer Corps, the 

20th of July, and the Path to Democracy,” German Studies Review

(October 1998), and “Black and White Memories of War: German 

‘War Movies’ and Public Memory,” paper delivered at the 1996 

Annual Meeting of the Popular Culture Association/American 

Culture Association, March 27, 1996. Dr. Lockenour has received 

grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Mellon 

Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission. 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR., is Director of the Strategic Studies 

Institute at the U.S. Army War College. His Army career included 

a combat tour in Vietnam and a number of command and staff 

assignments. While serving in the Plans, Concepts, and Assessments 

Division and the Conventional War Plans Division of the Joint 

Staff, he collaborated in the development of documents such as 

the National Military Strategy, the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, 

the Joint Military Net Assessment, national security directives, and 

presidential decision directives. He also was Director of Military 

Requirements and Capabilities Management at the U.S. Army 

War College, held the Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research 

Chair, and served as Director of Research in the Strategic Studies 

Institute. Professor Lovelace has published extensively in the 

areas of national security and military strategy formulation, future 

military requirements, and strategic planning. Professor Lovelace is 

a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

and the National War College. He holds an MBA from Embry Riddle 

Aeronautical University and a J.D. from Widener University School 

of Law and is a member of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey bars.

DAVID MCINTYRE directs the Bush School Certificate Program 

in Homeland Security and is the Director of the Integrative Center 

for Homeland Security for Texas A&M. Between 2001 and 2003, he 

served as Deputy Director of the ANSER Institute for Homeland 

Security, the nation’s only not-for-profit think tank focused solely 

on homeland security. In 2001 Dr. McIntyre retired from the U.S. 

military as the Dean of Faculty at the National War College. His 

approach to strategic problem-solving is built on 6 years of practical 

experience writing for four-star military leaders, including the Army 
106

Chief of Staff, and the Commander of all U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific 

region. Dr. McIntyre holds a B.S. in engineering from West Point, an 

M.A. in English and American literature from Auburn University, 

and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland. He 

is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College and the National War 

College.

PLAMEN PANTEV is Founder and Director of the Institute for 

Security and International Studies (ISIS) in Sofia, Bulgaria, and an 

Associate Professor at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridsky.” His 

international experience included IREX Researcher at Columbia 

University, New York; Johns Hopkins University, SAIS, Washington, 

DC; Harvard University, Law School in 1988-89; a NATO Individual 

Fellow in 1995-97; Ford Foundation/WEU Institute for Security 

Studies Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, Italy, 

1992; Foreign Researcher at The Netherlands Institute for International Relations “Clingendael” in 1993; Consultant to the Delegation 

of the EC in Sofia on foreign and regional policy of Bulgaria (1997-

2001); Sandhurst Academy, United Kingdom, in March 2001; NATO 

Defense College, Rome, Italy, in May 2002; the Henry L. Stimson 

Center, Washington, DC, in May 2003; the Diplomatic Academy, 

Vienna, Austria, in July 2004; and the Institute for European Policy, 

Berlin/Andrassy University, Budapest, Hungary, in September 2005. 

Dr. Pantev has authored more than 120 academic publications in the 

fields of international, regional, and national security, transatlantic 

relations, European Security and Defense Policy, international 

relations, international law, and international negotiations, in 

Bulgarian, English, Russian, French, and German.

GUILLAUME PARMENTIER is the Director of the French Center 

on the United States (CFE) at the French Institute of Internationale 

Relations (IFRI). He has conceived and initiated the Center on the 

United States and France at the Brookings Institution in Washington, 

DC, and of the French Center on the United States (CFE) at IFRI 

in Paris, of which he became the Director in 1999. From 1983, Mr. 

Parmentier was the Director of the Civilian Affairs Committee of the 

North Atlantic Assembly. He was Assistant Director of Information 
107

and Head of External Relations at the NATO headquarters (1990-94). 

Between 1995 and 1997, he was an advisor for international affairs at 

the French Defense Minister’s Cabinet. He then became Director of 

Studies and Research at the French Foundation for Defense Studies 

(1997-99), which he left upon the creation of CFE. Dr. Parmentier 

was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and the Sorbonne 

and Sciences-Pô in Paris, and has published extensively on European 

and transatlantic issues.

JOHN PRIOR is currently assigned as a Strategist in the Strategy, 

Plans, and Policy Directorate, Headquarters, Department of the 

Army. He is the Program Manager for the Eisenhower National 

Security Series, a year-long series of forums designed to engage the 

national security community in a broad and unique dialogue that 

identifies and promotes new ways to focus national power to meet 

the full range of security challenges confronting the United States in 

the 21st century. Captain Prior’s Army service includes duty as rifle 

platoon leader, antiarmor platoon leader, headquarters company 

executive officer, battalion logistics officer and assistant battalion 

operations officer for air operations in the 82nd Airborne Division, 

and assistant battalion operations officer and company commander 

in the 1st Armored Division, including 15 months of service during 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from March 2003 through June 2004. 

Captain Prior received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from RoseHulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, a Master of Science 

in engineering management from the University of Missouri at Rolla; 

and a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy 

School of Government, Harvard University. 

BRADLEY SMITH, a molecular biologist and policy analyst, is an 

Associate at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, and an Assistant 

Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His work 

at the Center focuses on improving the supply of medicines, vaccines, 

and other medical countermeasures for biosecurity threats. Dr. 

Smith is one of the principal organizers of the Alliance for Biosecurity, 

a collaboration between the Center and more than 10 biotechnology 

and pharmaceutical companies founded in 2005. He also is involved 

in strengthening international biosecurity preparedness, and served 
as the Project Director for the table-top bioterrorism exercise Atlantic 

Storm, whose scenario features a transatlantic summit of international 

leaders from Europe and North America responding to a campaign 

of bioterrorist attacks. Dr. Smith is an Associate Editor of the journal 

Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science.

JAMES STEINBERG is the Dean and holder of the Pickle Regents 

Chair in Public Affairs of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public 

Affairs. Before joining the School, he was the vice president and 

director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in 

Washington, DC (2001-05), where he supervised a wide-ranging 

research program on U.S. foreign policy. From December 1996 to 

August 2000, Dr. Steinberg served as deputy national security advisor 

to President Bill Clinton. During that period he also served as the 

president’s personal representative (“sherpa”) to the 1998 and 1999 

G-8 summits. Prior to becoming deputy national security advisor, 

Dr. Steinberg served as chief of staff of the U.S. State Department and 

director of the State Department’s policy planning staff (1994-96), and 

as deputy assistant secretary for analysis in the Bureau of Intelligence 

and Research (1993-94). He has also been a senior analyst at RAND in 

Santa Monica (1989-93), and a senior fellow for U.S. Strategic Policy 

at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (1985-

87). Dr. Steinberg served as Senator Edward Kennedy’s principal 

aide for the Senate Armed Services Committee (1983-85); minority 

counsel, U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee (1981-

83); special assistant to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General (Civil 

Division) (1979-80); law clerk to Judge David L. Bazelon, U.S. Court 

of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1978-79); and special assistant to the 

assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, U.S. Department 

of Health, Education, and Welfare (1977). He also is a member of 

the board of directors of the Pacific Council on International Policy, 

the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the International Advisory Board 

for the International Programs Committee of the Governing Board 

of the National Research Council, and the President’s Council on 

International Activities of Yale University. He is a member of the 

D.C. Bar. Dr. Steinberg received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard 

in 1973 and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1978. 

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RADBOUD J. H. M. VAN DEN AKKER currently is assigned to the 

Policy Planning and Speechwriting Section, Political Affairs and 

Security Policy Division, NATO Headquarters, where he writes 

speeches, articles, and think pieces for the NATO Secretary General 

and other senior NATO officials. He first joined NATO Headquarters 

at the end of 1992 as Executive Officer of the International Staff’s 

Political Affairs Division, before moving to his current position in 

1999. In Brussels, Mr. van den Akker first served on the International 

Secretariat of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. As the Director 

of the Assembly’s Economic Committee, he coordinated the work 

of a committee of over 50 parliamentarians from NATO country 

parliaments and, from 1989 onwards, Central and Eastern Europe, in 

areas of defense/economic aspects of the transatlantic relationship, 

and East-West economic cooperation and convergence. Mr. van den 

Akker received a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Modern History 

and International Relations from the Utrecht University, The 

Netherlands.

TYSON VOELKEL currently is a student in the George Bush School 

of Government and Public service pursuing a degree in International 

Affairs. After graduation, Captain Voelkel will serve as an instructor 

at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served as a company 

commander in the 82nd Airborne Division on two separate tours to 

Iraq. Captain Voelkel graduated from Texas A&M University with a 

degree in engineering. 

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SPONSOR INFORMATION

The European Union Center of Excellence (EUCE) in the 

International Programs Office at Texas A&M University is a 

university-wide body devoted to studying European Union (EU) 

and transatlantic affairs. Established in 2001, it is a forum for 

active, balanced, and nonpartisan Euro-Atlantic dialogues through 

education, debate, scholarly inquiry, campus resources, community 

outreach, public service, and transatlantic collaboration. It is part of 

the EUCE Network in the United States and is the only such official 

center in the south-central and southwestern United States co-funded 

by the European Commission. 

The EUCE pursues an integrated portfolio of initiatives in support 

of Texas A&M University’s globalization efforts. It complements 

academic-educational programs and advocates scholarship across 

disciplinary and collegiate borders. It sponsors and stimulates 

a broad repertoire of events and initiatives such as conferences, 

lectures, panels, publications, business seminars, training for public 

schoolteachers, student and faculty research grants, scholars-inresidence, and curriculum enhancement. The EUCE focuses attention 

on themes such as climate change, energy, and the environment; 

knowledge and innovation; and shared safety and security. As its 

distinct profile, the EUCE pursues projects oriented towards the 

wider Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico 

regions, and strategic implications of EU enlargement. 

The EUCE brings together colleges, departments, and other 

entities on the campus and in the wider region, and works with faculty, 

students, and staff. It builds networks and collaborates with similar 

bodies in Europe through professional relationships to enhance the 

quality and impact of its initiatives. The EUCE reaches out to groups 

and individuals with varied backgrounds, experiences, and interests 

in the academic, corporate, educational, nonprofit, news media, and 

public affairs sectors and the broader community.

The George Bush Presidential Library Foundation was 

established in 1991 as a nonprofit educational foundation to design, 
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build, and support the George Bush Presidential Library and 

Museum at Texas A&M University. In addition to sponsoring its 

own programs and activities, the Foundation provides program and 

financial support to the Library, as well as the George Bush School of 

Government and Public Service. 

The Foundation sponsors a number of programs, including a 

yearly domestic and foreign policy conference, the White House 

Lecture and Exhibit Series, and various other lecture and program 

series. Through its newsletter and quarterly events flyer, the 

Foundation reaches out to the entire United States to attract 

participants to its activities. Through its activities, the Foundation is 

helping make the George Bush Presidential Library Center a leading 

center in cultural, policy, and academic dialogue.

The Bush School of Government and Public Service at 

Texas A&M University educates principled leaders in public and 

international affairs, conducts research, and performs service. 

Both the Master of Public Service and Administration (MPSA) and 

Master of International Affairs (MPIA) are full-time graduate degree 

programs that provide a professional education for individuals 

seeking careers in the public or nonprofit sectors, or for activities in 

the private sector that have a governmental focus. The curriculum 

integrates leadership assessment and skills training throughout the 

course of study. The leadership emphasis and required capstone 

project enhance students’ skills in areas of critical importance to 

effective public management.

The MPSA, a 21-month, 48-credit-hour program, combines 11 

courses in public management, policy analysis, economics, and 

research methods with six electives, two of which may be taken in 

other departments at Texas A&M University. These electives allow 

students to pursue interests and develop specialties throughout the 

wide range of activities encompassed by public service. Students 

select an elective concentration in one of the following areas: nonprofit organizations; state and local policy and management; natural 

resources, environment, and technology policy and administration; 

security, energy, and technology policy; and health policy and 

management. A professional internship is completed in the first 

summer session.
113

The MPIA, a 21-month, 48-credit-hour program, offers tracks 

in National Security Affairs and International Economics and 

Development. To refine study in either track, students construct a 

program of study based on two or more concentrations or clusters 

of related courses such as economic development, diplomacy in 

world affairs, intelligence in statecraft, national security, or regional 

studies. Classes are taught by a faculty with both scholarly and 

practical international experience. Satisfactory completion of a 

foreign language exam is required to graduate. At the end of their first 

year of study, students will participate in either an internationallyoriented internship or a foreign language immersion course.

Certificate programs are designed for individuals interested 

in advancing their understanding in the international or security 

arenas. The Certificate in Advanced International Affairs (CAIA) 

Program is a focused curriculum offered via distance education 

or through in-residence study. It is designed for people who have 

limited time but a strong need to upgrade specific dimensions of 

their understanding of international relations. Students take 12-15 

credit hours of graduate course work in international affairs chosen 

from a menu of courses. 

The Certificate in Homeland Security (CHS) Program is offered 

only via distance education and intended for people who need to 

understand the new security environment as part of their management and supervisory duties. This program requires students to take 

15 credit hours of graduate course work centered upon homeland 

security issues and strategies at all levels of the government and 

private industry. Courses also cover terrorism, response and 

recovery to weapons of mass destruction, and critical infrastructure 

protection. 

The Institute for Science, Technology & Public Policy (ISTPP) is a 

nonpartisan, interdisciplinary public policy research institute, which 

pursues the dual mission of examining public policy issues in scholarly 

depth, and communicating research-based knowledge to public and 

policy decisionmakers. ISTPP seeks to facilitate interdisciplinary 

research required for today’s complex problems and enhance Texas 

A&M University’s ability to communicate research findings in ways 

that have a positive impact on policy and public understanding 

of scientific and technological issues. Current research focus areas 
114

include Environmental and Natural Resources Policy; Infrastructure, 

Environment, and Public Policy; Biotechnology and Public Policy; 

and Information Technology and Public Policy.

The Strategic Studies Institute is the U.S. Army’s center for 

geostrategic and national security research and analysis. The Strategic 

Studies Institute conducts strategic research and analysis to support 

the U.S. Army War College curricula, provides direct analysis for 

Army and Department of Defense leadership, and serves as a bridge 

to the wider strategic community.

The Strategic Studies Institute is composed of civilian research 

professors, uniformed military officers, and a professional support 

staff. All have extensive credentials and experience. SSI is divided 

into three components: the Art of War Department focuses on global, 

transregional, and functional issues, particularly those dealing 

with Army transformation; the Regional Strategy and Planning 

Department focuses on regional strategic issues; and the Academic 

Engagement Program creates and sustains partnerships with the 

global strategic community. In addition to its organic resources, SSI 

has a web of partnerships with strategic analysts around the world, 

including the foremost thinkers in the field of security and military 

strategy. In most years, about half of SSI’s publications are written 

by these external partners.

SSI studies are published by the Institute and distributed to key 

strategic leaders in the Army and Department of Defense, the military 

educational system, Congress, the media, other think tanks and 

defense institutes, and major colleges and universities. SSI studies 

use history and current political, economic, and military factors to 

develop strategic recommendations.

• Books - SSI publishes about 3-5 books per year consisting of 

authored works or edited compilations.

• Monographs - Policy oriented reports that provide 

recommendations. They are usually 25-90 pages in length.

• Carlisle Papers - These highlight the very best of student 

papers from the Army War College.

• Letort Papers - Essays, retrospectives, or speeches of interest 

to the defense academic community.
115

• Colloquium Reports - For larger conferences SSI may produce 

a report on the proceedings.

• Colloquium Briefs - These two-to-four page briefs are produced 

after the colloquia with which we have co-sponsored or helped 

fund.

At the request of the Army leadership, SSI sometimes provides shorter 

analytical reports on pressing strategic issues. The distribution of 

these is usually limited.

Additionally, every year SSI compiles a Key Strategic Issues List 

(KSIL) based on input from the U.S. Army War College faculty, the 

Army Staff, the Joint Staff, the unified and specified commands, and 

other Army organizations. This is designed to guide the research of 

SSI, the U.S. Army War College, and other Army-related strategic 

analysts.

SSI analysts publish widely outside of the Institute’s own 

products. They have written books for Cambridge University 

Press, Princeton University Press, University Press of Kansas, Duke 

University Press, Praeger, Frank Cass, Rowman, and Littlefield and 

Brassey’s. They have contributed chapters to many other books 

including publications from the Brookings Institution, Jane’s Defence 

Group, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. SSI 

analysts have written articles for Foreign Affairs, International Security, 

Survival, Washington Quarterly, Orbis, The National Interest, Current 

History, Political Science Quarterly, Joint Force Quarterly, Parameters, 

The Journal of Politics, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Jane’s 

Intelligence Review, Occasional Papers of the Woodrow Wilson Center, 

Contemporary Security Policy, Defense Analysis, Military Operations 

Research, Strategic Review, Military Review, National Security Studies 

Quarterly, Journal of Military History, War in History, War & Society, 

The Historian, Infantry Magazine, The World and I, Aerospace Historian, 

Central Asian Security, Asian Survey, SAIS Review, China Quarterly, 

Comparative Politics, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Small 

Wars and Insurgencies, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 

Special Warfare, Comparative Strategy, Korean Journal of Defense 

Analysis, Journal of East Asian Studies, World Affairs, Problems of 

Post-Communism, Conflict, Diplomatic History, Airpower Journal, Low 
116

Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement, Politique Étranger, Allgemeine 

Schweizerische Militärzeitschrift, and African Security Review.

SSI also co-sponsors academic conferences to examine issues 

of importance to the Army, collaborating with some of the most 

prestigious universities in the country. Recent partners included 

Georgetown, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, University 

of Chicago, University of Miami, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Johns 

Hopkins, and the Bush School of Government and Public Service at 

Texas A&M University.

Named in honor of the 34th President of the United States, the 

Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Series seeks to explore 

new ways to employ more effectively our Nation’s capabilities to 

meet the range of security challenges we face in the 21st century.

The Series was established in 2002 by the Chief of Staff of the 

United States Army to address the critical security issues of our time. 

It is a full year of programs and activities that engage and involve all 

facets of the national security community. News media, corporate 

and economic policy representatives, academia and think tanks, 

all departments of the U.S. government, nongovernmental and 

international organizations, the diplomatic community, members 

of Congress and their staffs, foreign officials, and specialists are all 

invited and have the opportunity to contribute. Indeed, to ensure 

diversity of opinion and balanced inquiry, the Army partners with 

co-sponsors from each of these sectors in the conceptualization, 

planning, and execution of each Eisenhower Series event. This 

approach is a more effective means of exploring the complex security 

issues of the 21st century.

The Series culminates annually with the Dwight D. Eisenhower 

National Security Conference in Washington, DC. At the conference, 

a distinguished array of national security decisionmakers will 

assemble for 2 days to make presentations, participate in panel 

discussions, and field questions in a setting which promotes extensive 

discourse focused on a single unifying theme. The 2006 theme is 

“National Security for a New Era—The Evolution of Cooperation, 

Competition, and Conflict.”