NATO AND PEACEKEEPING
Publisher: Robert J. Jackson
Volume: 34 pages, pdf
Description:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantlement of the USSR, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has undergone such a profound transformation that it has, for all intents and purposes, become a new organization. NATO has not merely adjusted to its new circumstances; it has gone through a complete process of metamorphosis. One can conceive of an institution in two ways. A purposive definition would be something such as: an institution is a social structure organized to achieve some specified goal or goals. But institutions also arise, grow and develop in much less purposive ways. In this latter case they can be thought of as "congealed tastes" or conventions about values that are condensed into organizations or institutions. The former definition is often useful for understanding the origin of new institutions, while the latter may be more accurate of institutions which emerge, grow and develop over time. Moreover, many institutions originate out of such a confused set of competing ideas and desires that their precise purposes or objectives are not at all clear. Moreover, many institutions are devoted to such diffuse idealistic and romantic goals that the relation between their activities and goals is tenuous, to say the least.