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This afterword focuses on the NATO expansion. NATO's future formed a key part of the negotiations on German unification. In early February 1990, James A. Baker III, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Helmut Kohl all discussed with Mikhail Gorbachev the prospect that if he allowed Germany to unify, NATO would not subsequently move eastward beyond its 1989 border, in other words, not even into East Germany. Gorbachev responded orally that any expansion of “the zone of NATO” would be “unacceptable,” but nothing was written down and no formal agreements were reached. Ultimately, the representatives of the United States and West Germany expertly outmaneuvered Gorbachev in the negotiations over German unification in 1990. They accomplished their goals of expanding NATO to East Germany and of leaving open the door for future expansion to Eastern Europe.

This chapter applies process-tracing to the Baltic experience from independence in 1991 to gaining NATO membership in 2004. The chapter begins by discussing the circumstances of the Baltic states immediately upon independence. The Baltics faced an external threat from their former occupier, Russia, which directly threatened to undermine their path to democratic consolidation. Unable to immediately gain the public good of security from the lucrative established IO of NATO, the Baltics chose to form their own security IO with support from the Nordic states. Next, the chapter details how the Baltic and Nordic states agreed that a peacekeeping-oriented IO, the Baltic Battalion, would best serve as a vehicle for quickly bolstering Baltic security. The chapter then explores how the United States, the key player in NATO, began to change its view on Baltic NATO membership following the creation of BALTBAT. The chapter concludes by explaining how the Baltic states, through BALTBAT and NATO-sponsored programs, reformed their militaries, improved civil-military relations, and finally achieved NATO membership.

This chapter examines the dilemmas of decision making in uncertain times. It first considers the scholarship on expert evaluation before discussing academic policy advice on the Afghanistan War, the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), German reunification within NATO, and the Iraq War. It argues that 9/11 and the fall of the Berlin Wall point to a more qualified role for outside experts in strategic planning. It also highlights the tendency of scholarly experts to prescribe solutions to such matters as German unification and NATO expansion that were likely to have been less wise than those adopted by the policymakers. Finally, it calls for enhanced channels of interaction between the government's strategic planners and the independent expert community.

NATO’s admission of three classes of a total of twelve former communist states and republics took place in the years 1999, 2004, and 2009. Each of the admitted states had undergone a preparation process known as the Partnership for Peace. The Russian reaction was very negative, as they strengthened their own military in response and also complained that NATO had now moved to their doorstep. At the alliance’s Bucharest Summit in 2008, NATO made the strategically important decision to deny admission to both Georgia and Ukraine. This denial may have strengthened the Russian resolve to invade the first in 2008 and the second in 2014. After the Russian absorption of Crimea, NATO tactics bolstered the position of other vulnerable states but also angered Russian leaders.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main claims and empirical findings, discussing the implications of these findings as well as directions for future research. At their heart, alliance treaties are about using military force. As such, war planning can be conceptualized as the core of alliance treaty negotiations. Equipped with this premise, the book argued that the key variable determining whether conditions are conducive to agreement is the compatibility of the participants' ideal war plans. These plans must be both operationally and strategically compatible. When war plan compatibility is low, the second key explanatory variable comes into play: the number of negotiation participants that have attractive outside options. The chapter then highlights how the arguments and evidence in the book indicate new research directions in four areas related to alliances: alliance treaty design, alliance reliability, NATO expansion, and the formation of defense cooperation agreements.

While the previous chapter chronicled the origins of the Cold War, chapter 8 (“Consolidating the Liberal International Order”) considers its ending. It focuses in particular on the principal security component of Western order during the Cold War’s endgame, NATO. In contrast to the extraordinary transformations after World War II, the pivotal changes in international power and influence that took place between the 1989 and 1991 did not correspond with matching changes in American order preferences or, more importantly, in order outcomes. Instead, US leaders ultimately chose to stick with existing principles, maintaining continuity of the Western order in the transition from the Cold War to a post–Cold War international system. We can account for this continuity, this chapter argues, by assessing American perceptions of the lack of new any new threatening entities or forces during this critical period.

The chapter is set at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 30, 1997, the day General John Shalikashvili retired from the US military. The chapter overviews the retirement ceremony from Shalikashvili’s perspective as he reviews the honor guard with President William J. Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen and thinks back to that night when he first laid eyes on US soldiers in Pappenheim and the role that luck has played in his attaining the American dream. The chapter also thumbnails his accomplishments as chairman: (1) confronting historic change, especially by realizing Partnership for Peace and NATO expansion, (2) was more supportive of non-traditional military missions (military operations other than war, MOOTW), (3) prepared the US military for the challenges of the twenty-first century, particularly by downsizing the military yet upgrading their capability and readiness, including by emphasizing joint education, joint planning, and joint training, and (4) rebalanced civil-military relations. The chapter ends with Shalikashvili’s closing remarks, emphasizing his love for soldiers and their families.

This chapter introduces the book's research question: what mechanisms underpin the relationship between democratic transitions and membership in international organizations? It summarizes the argument and evidence, and then outlines the rest of the book.