What is NATO for?

Before 11 September, the cumulative impact of NATO enlargement and Balkan interventions had given NATO a stronger European focus, even as the security priorities of its leading member were shifting away from Europe. NATO is becoming more of a European security organisation, less of an alliance. Its utility as a Europe-wide security structure should not be underrated: consolidation of a peaceful order across European is in itself a major achievement, permitting the US and its allies to focus their attention on other regions, with 'coalitions of the willing' benefiting from the stand-ardised procedures, training and infrastructure that NATO has developed among the armed forces of its member states and partners. All of this should be useful for the war against terrorism. But the United States should not expect too much from NATO itself, as a formal alliance, outside Europe, despite despite the emergence of the new terrorist threat to Western security.