NATO’s role in the European Union’s success
James Goldgeier, the dean here at American University’s School of International Service, makes the case that NATO gets a lot of credit for the EU’s success. He sees the Balkans as important recent evidence that the alliance has had as much to do with peace in Europe as the Union: Then there is Bosnia. The ...
James Goldgeier, the dean here at American University's School of International Service, makes the case that NATO gets a lot of credit for the EU's success. He sees the Balkans as important recent evidence that the alliance has had as much to do with peace in Europe as the Union:
James Goldgeier, the dean here at American University’s School of International Service, makes the case that NATO gets a lot of credit for the EU’s success. He sees the Balkans as important recent evidence that the alliance has had as much to do with peace in Europe as the Union:
Then there is Bosnia. The war in the early 1990s raged for nearly four years. The United States hoped that the European Union would stop the carnage inflicted by the Serbian government and its allies, but the organization had neither the will nor the capability to do so. In 1995, the United States led NATO to end the war and help promote the peace. It was not the European Union that put an end to the most horrific violence since World War II. It was not the European Union that ended a genocide reminiscent of the crimes committed by the Nazis. It was NATO, just as it was four years later when the Kosovar Albanians were under assault by the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic.
We should celebrate all that the European Union has done, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee clearly wanted to send a signal that European leaders cannot let the current economic crisis lead to an unraveling of what their predecessors achieved. But peace in Europe has not simply been the result of greater prosperity, it has also been the prerequisite for economic growth. U.S. leadership of NATO helped make both peace and prosperity possible.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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