Another Chance for NATO?

Almost the entire Russian. political elite—-reformers and hard-liners alike—today advocate expansionism or hegemonism, for their economically troubled country Yet with Russia’s leaders turning toward a menacing foreign policy, the U.S military presence in Europe is being drastically scaled back from a Cold War level of 300,000 to 100,000 or less.

NATO, the institution that for more than four decades contained Communist expansionism. and kept the peace, is languishing Four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO has failed to develop a compelling post Cold War role. Reduced to a marginal role in the former Yugoslavia, the alliance today is an. elaborate security structure for a part of the world whose security is not threatened.