Engagement versus Restraint: Explaining the Strategic Alignment between Core U.S. National Interests and NATO Enlargement
Abstract
American national interests have largely guided the country’s foreign policy decisions on strategic priorities and the degree of global involvement. Faced with numerous unfamiliar threats and the vast opportunities of the post-Cold War era, American policymakers had to articulate the nation’s role primarily within the Euro-Atlantic space. Having already been operational for over four decades, NATO faced fundamental questions about its future in the early 1990s. The debate over NATO’s purpose and institutional enlargement persists to this day. American grand strategic doctrines have assessed NATO’s Open Door policy differently, with one group of theories celebrating the policy while others denounce its value to core U.S. national interests.
The paper utilizes qualitative analysis, incorporating process tracing and desk research methods to examine primary and secondary sources. The study aims to evaluate the alignment between NATO enlargement and American national interests. To do so, it first reviews four types of American grand strategies and groups them into two broader categories based on their advocacy for engagement or restraint. Then, the research outlines four core American national interests. Finally, it explains the congruence level between NATO expansion policy and those national interests from engagement and restraint perspectives. The analysis reveals that context, time, and theoretical framework largely determine the evaluation results. In particular, the findings indicate that NATO enlargement is highly congruent with American interests when assessed using engagement grand strategies, whereas the alignment decreases markedly when applying Restraint strategic logic.
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