The Nuclear Family: Tropes of Gender and Pathology in the Western Alliance

In February 1995, I was at NATO's political headquarters outside of Brussels interviewing an American foreign service officer assigned to the NATO international staff. Comparing the relationship within the formal alliance to the relationship in the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace, this official explained to me, “NATO is a marriage” that involves “living together with intimate relations” and even “exchange of bodily fluids, in terms of shedding blood together.” In contrast, “partnership for peace is living in sin.” The official continued that the ex-Soviet bloc “countries just got divorced; they are on the rebound, looking to get married immediately – and to someone who is as big and powerful as their previous husband.” Although invited to join the partnership, the Russians “don't fit; they are the wrong sex – another masculine power.” At another point in the interview, the official made the point that the United States, when it wanted to, could exercise strong leadership in the alliance because it was like a “macho stud” while the European allies were “saying, come ravish me.”1 We should underscore here the obvious but significant casting in this family drama: the United States as husband or “macho stud,” the European nations as marriage partners or ravishees, and Russia as America's masculine competitor who does not “fit” into a post-Cold War nuclear family.