Analytical thinking concerning U.S.-European military ties in the post-cold war era suffers from several fundamental conceptual inadequacies. Everyone knows that the United States and Europe will continue to have military ties, but analysts of those ties typically conduct their thinking at a level of generality that is either too high or too low. At the high level, they search for one ideal post-cold war security structure–a new NATO. At the low level, analysts and policy makers treat the number of U.S. troops remaining in Europe as the measure of the relationship with little regard for what these forces do.

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