Dr. Scott Fitzsimmons:

That is a really big question. To a great extent they are not mutually exclusive. The better the EU gets at co-operation, planning and preparation in this area, not only will we be better at dealing with issues that are not of any great concern to the United States but also at dealing at issues that are of concern. NATO should play a role in defending Europe from major external threats. Thankfully, until recently, that was not a particularly pressing issue. Great power wars are, thankfully, very rare, not that we should discount their threat because they are extremely harmful when they do occur. However, they do not occur nearly as often as smaller scale crises such as Europe experienced during the 1990s, especially in the Balkans. While the United States eventually became involved in that, which were the first real NATO operations, by no means did it jump in at the beginning. Enormous amounts of death and suffering occurred for years before the United States got involved. Given this was a European crisis that occurred in our geopolitical back yard, I favour first and foremost Ireland being a key player in European defence and security capacity building, so that if the United States either wants to stay out completely of a crisis or drag its feet and get in slowly, which is a distinct possibility for the foreseeable future, Europe can act on its own. Developing our capacity in this area will be very helpful when we do face a larger scale external threat. We should, first and foremost, focus on capacity building to deal with crises in Europe.