Europe and intervention after the Cold War

In a volume on international security it can no longer be taken for granted that Europe has any right to be treated as an actor of dominating importance. The end of the Cold War has de-emphasised the role of NATO in world affairs. Global security is no longer primarily affected by the relationship between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Rather the foci of attention now are the Security Council, its permanent members individually, a number of regional bodies, of which NATO and the European Union are but two, and the many crisis-ridden parts of the world which cry out for assistance.

Europe none the less has a considerable amount to offer as a supporter of security elsewhere. It is not, nor is it ever likely to be again, the principal provider of forces and resources for foreign military intervention as it was for so long between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. The battering its component states gave to each other in the two world wars severely attenuated its long-held and formidable capacity to reach out and rearrange affairs in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. Since 1945 it has been the United States which has borne the principal burden of leadership and commitment in international security affairs, chiefly by example. In the case of the Gulf War we saw another mighty intervener – although with resources not military contingents –in Japan.