It attempted to fill the power vacuum in Europe created by the Second World War in order to forestall a further expansion of Soviet influence into Central Europe. By signing the Washington Treaty 1 the Western European powers co-created a hierarchic Western system tantamount to a ruled based institutional hegemonic security community.
The Atlantic Alliance 2 , although rule based was dominated from the outset by the interests of the United States. The competition with the Soviet Union further strengthened the US hold on the Alliance by the creation of NATO, the Western treaty organisation, thus turning the liberal Atlantic treaty regime into a realist collective defence organisation.
The collapse of the Soviet Union would remove the external threat thus leaving the Western defence organisation in an existential quandary. Realist thinking would suggest that in the absence of the external Soviet threat, NATO would become obsolete and thus disintegrate 3. However, a strand of realist institutionalism suggests that NATO will survive as long as it served US interest, ie the interest of the hegemon or the preponderant treaty partner 4.
Liberals assumed that NATO might survive due to the low transaction costs within the existing security regime 5. A new security architecture might just increase the cost of the security.
The predictions about the polarity differed. Liberals such as Fukuyama imagined a unipolar world 6. Realists predicted either a US hegemony or a return to multipolarity with its enhanced insecurity and fractious relations.
