US Desires NATO expansion without cause

After the fall of the Soviet Union the United States was still looking for opportunities to expand its power achieve global hegemony. The Pentagon's post-Iraq War I "Defense Planning Guidance stated the "a substantial American presence in Europe will provide reassurance and stability as the new democracies of Eastern Europe and possible some states of the former Soviet Union seek to be integrated into a larger and evolving security architectures. The ideas where bested represented by Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney told Wolfowitz aide Zalmay Khalilzad: "You've discovered a new rationale for our role in the world." Wolfowitz: "What we were afraid of was people whow say ... 'Let's bring all of the troops home, and let's abandon our position in Europe.' It's hard to imagine just how uncertain the world looked at the end of the Cold War". By 2000 these ideas were accepted as policy. At the time the focus was more Germany and other Western European countries creating their own security decoupled from the US and the EU replacing NATO.