Nato II Common Bounderies for Common Interest

NATO I For 30 years, NATO has served the West remarkably well. Now it is time for a marked l strategic change, especially as regards NATO naval forces. Although NATO has deep cultural, political and economic roots, in essence it is a military coalition designed to prevent Soviet aggression. NATO transformed a basic principle of American national security: prior to 1949, the military world view of the United States was to avoid European entanglements, to rely upon large oceans and a powerful Navy and to assist endangered Eurpoean democracies only after war had begun; through NATO, the United States entered a permanent European entanglement In order to deter a third world war on the continen