In the Line of Fire: NATO-NGO Relations from Bosnia to Afghanistan

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and collapse of the Soviet Union, some theorists expected that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would no longer be necessary, resulting in the dissolution of the Alliance and a return to power politics among the former NATO allies (Mearsheimer 1990). Such predictions proved not only wrong, in that NATO continued to exist, they also failed to appreciate the extent to which the Alliance would be utilized in the 1990s and 2000s (see Flockhart, this volume). NATO’s new operations, however, are exceedingly different from the previous, defensively ordered mandate. Rather than confronting state-based threats via the concept of traditional and nuclear deterrence, NATO today must proactively engage in conflict and crisis management.