The U.S. has taken lessons that they have learned from the Kosovo conflict and the Gulf war from a decade ago. "The Americans have been paranoid about maintaining command and control of their operations in Afghanistan," says one Brussels-based diplomat, "They do not want a repeat of the Kosovo conflict where lots of NATO countries wanted their own say (Barber 2)." During the Gulf war, Europe was not nearly as cooperative and supportive of the U.S. as they are now in the crisis in Afghanistan (Patten 1).
The United States and the European Union have disagreed on a couple of defense policies for quite some time now. It is difficult to build an agreement for the future of the Trans-Atlantic relationship. For more than a half a century, cooperation amongst these two continents has remained triumphant in preserving peace and security (Crosby 1). .
On September 12th, the North Atlantic Council met in response to the appalling attacks carried out against the United States. The Council agreed that "if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the United States, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty (NATO 1)." Which states that an armed attack against one or more of the allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all (Walker 1).
The commitment to cooperative self-defense embodied in the Washington Treaty was first entered into in circumstances very different from those that exist now, but it remains no less valid and no less essential today, in a world subject to the bane of international terrorism (NATO 1). When the Heads of State and Government of NATO met in Washington in 1999, they paid tribute to the success of the alliance in ensuring the freedom of its members during the Cold War and in making possible a Europe that was whole and free. But they also recognized the existence of a wide variety of risks to security, some of them quite unlike those that had called NATO into existence.
