title: Collective identity in a democratic community
abstract: Why was it that the United States, the undisputed superpower of the early post-1945 period, found itself entangled in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with Western Europe only four years after the end of World War II? Why was it that a pattern of cooperation evolved in NATO that survived not only the ups and downs of the Cold War and various severe interallied conflicts – from the 1956 Suez crisis to the conflict over Euromissiles in the 1980s – but also the end of the Cold War? Why