Saving NATO's Foundation

Transatlantic defense cooperation is a little like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nothing much seems to happen. Meanwhile, Europe is building a separate European defense industry, based in part on shortsighted, if not downright misguided, calculations of self-interest. For its part, the United States is tentative at best and ambivalent at worst about greater cooperation. But as the United States and Europe dither, the effectiveness of the nato alliance?and ultimately its future?is increasingly at risk. The costs of inaction mount daily. Declining defense budgets, already stretched too thin, are denied the efficiencies that greater transatlantic cooperation could yield. Both Europe and the United States have therefore had to delay the modernization of their mili tary forces and thus have been slow to take advantage of advances in technology?notably information technology that applies to command, control, communication, and intelligence. The air war in Kosovo