Evolving United States Relations with the Atlantic Community

Before considering evolving relations between the United States and the Atlantic Community, it is useful to examine briefly the meaning of the words “Atlantic Community,†a term that means different things to different people. It has no agreed definition because it is still a concept and not yet an institution. It purports to be geographically descriptive. However, when one considers the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is generally regarded as the most important institutional reflection of a community of interests between the European and North American countries bordering the Atlantic basin, one finds Italy, Greece, and Turkey are members while Spain and Eire, both Atlantic countries, are absent. Similarly, if one looks at the membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is another institution generally regarded as reflecting common interests of the “Atlantic Community,†one finds that all the NATO members belong as well as Eire, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Spain. Although there are political reasons to account for all this confusion, at the present time the term “Atlantic Community†connotes neither an agreed geographic area nor a specific group of countries.