All dressed up and no place to go.

F ollowing the 2000 American presidential election, some analysts worried that transatlantic relations would be strained by the policies proposed by the incoming Bush Administration. From disagreements over the Kyoto Treaty to the decision to proceed quickly with the deployment of ballistic missile defenses, a functional split between America and its European allies threatened to emerge. While the attacks of 11 September 2001 changed US interests and priorities overseas, these disagreements will not dissolve completely. They have receded, however, in immediate importance to the American goal of fighting terrorists with a global reach. As European officials were quoted to have told an American official after 9/11, “Kyoto is an issue you argue about when all else is well.” Retaining the commitment of a broad-based coalition is critical to the success of America’s evolving war against terrorism. Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an obvious hub from which to organize this coalition, and alliance members have shown their eagerness to respond to common threats such as terrorism, Washington has held true allied support at arm’s length. While officials in Washington have endorsed NATO’s invocation of Article 5 for the first time in the alliance’s history and accepted limited contributions of troops and equipment for the military campaign and later support for the restricted peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, they have refused to allow NATO to engage in the sort of operations the alliance embraced when it affirmed its Article 24 commitments in April 1999. This refusal, while puzzling given the consistent willingness of the European allies to contribute troops and resources, is even more surprising