NATO in the 1990s: the response to the legitimacy challenge and the evolution of the organization in a changing Europe

The political changes that took place in East and Central Europe during the end of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s had a huge impact on the security structures in Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its legitimacy was challenged when the former Soviet Empire started to crumble. This thesis addresses NATO's response to this legitimacy challenge. It is argued in the thesis that the response came in a two stage process. The first response was a debate where different reasons were given for NATO's continued existence. The thesis focuses only on the justifications used to maintain the organization. It was found that there were external and internal justifications and that the people partaking in the debate could be labelled either as belonging to the neorealist school or to the neoliberal school in the field of international relations. Neorealists tended to use more external justifications for keeping NATO. The external justifications are based more on threats than possibilities. It was argued that despite the absence of the Warsaw Pact, there were still threats that made NATO necessary. Neoliberal institutionalists used both external and internal justifications, but stressed the opportunities and NATO's positive effects as an international institution. The second response to the legitimacy challenge posed to NATO was a process of change where both new ways of thinking and new ways of structuring the organization emerged. Both schools of thought agree that NATO was adapting to the new reality, but used their own arguments from the first stage when explaining the changes. The conclusions drawn from the thesis are that NATO is needed as a security actor in Europe, and that the changes that NATO has undergone have been the right ones to satisfy both those who fear future conflicts and those who want to work for enhanced security. It is also concluded that in order to understand NATO's two responses, it is essential to study arguments from both schools of thought. The two schools have good arguments and they complement each other which makes an analysis covering both fruitful. NATO survived the legitimacy challenge and has recently decided to accept three new members in 1999. The process of change has not been an easy one for NATO, but the organization has without any doubt kept the position as the most important security actor in Europe. It is very likely that it will continue to keep that position for a long time to come.