In 1961, the world for Joseph W. Ralston did not go much beyond the Norwood High School stage where he acted in the senior class play.

        Forty years later, the world is his stage.

        The 58-year-old four-star Air Force general is commander-in-chief of U.S. military forces in Europe and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. It is a post first filled by Dwight Eisenhower when the military alliance with Europe was formed 52 years ago.

        It means Gen. Ralston commands 65,000 troops from 39 NATO nations and other countries participating in the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

        It means, too, that with the threat of further terrorist assaults on his own country and most of the NATO nations he represents, he finds himself near the center of the storm.

        “The general has a full plate right now,” said Roy Stafford, a professor of national security studies at the National War College in Washington.

        “The Supreme Allied Commander is always part-politician and part-general,” said Mr. Stafford. “And Gen. Ralston has shown he is adept at it.”

        Today he will return to Oxford to deliver a lecture at Miami University where, in the early 1960s, he earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).

        Bob Yountz of Oxford, retired aviation director at Miami, taught the young ROTC student to fly in 1964; a few years later the young Air Force lieutenant was flying combat fighter missions over Vietnam and Laos.

        “He was good,” Mr. Yountz said. “If you have ever tried to teach anybody anything, this is the kind of student you would want. Serious. Dedicated. You could tell he would be a leader.”

        Today, Gen. Ralston is likely to spend some time with the present crop of Miami ROTC students.

        “I can't think of a better role model for our students,” said Miami University President James Garland.

        Mr. Garland struck up a friendship with his school's famous alumnus when he and his wife visited the Miami campus in Luxembourg last year and were entertained by Gen. Ralston and his wife, Diane.

        “He's just a reasonable person, a good listener, someone who reflects on what he hears,” Mr. Garland said.

        NATO was formed in the early days of the Cold War principally so that European democracies who felt threatened by the presence of the Soviet Union on their doorsteps could count on the U.S. military to join them in protecting their homelands.

        But two weeks ago, as Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Ralston had to take an action that the founders of the NATO alliance hadn't foreseen: sending NATO military assets to the United States for homeland protection against terrorism. Five NATO AWACS radar planes were sent to patrol the skies.

        “The planes didn't amount to much militarily, but it had real symbolic significance,” Mr. Stafford said. “It was a reversal of the original purpose of NATO — them helping us, instead of us helping them.”

        But it is unlikely that the member nations of NATO will be asked to do much more, Mr. Stafford said.

        “What we want from NATO is what we are getting,” Mr. Stafford said. “Flying rights over NATO countries, political support, intelligence sharing, police work, like the arrests in Germany.”

        The military role for NATO in the war on terrorism may not be great, Mr. Stafford said, but there are several big issues looming for the NATO commander.

        One is whether the United States will keep a significant military presence in the Balkans, or gradually turn the peacekeeping mission over to other NATO forces.

        Gen. Ralston, Mr. Stafford said, “is likely to want to continue the U.S. presence and he'll probably get some resistance to that from Congress and the Bush administration.”

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