North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by
the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide
collective security against the Soviet Union.
Signing of the NATO Treaty
NATO was the first peacetime
military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western
Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of
Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security. The former
required a massive influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes re-establish
industries and produce food, and the latter required assurances against a
resurgent Germany or incursions from the Soviet Union. The United States viewed
an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the
prevention of communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary
of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to
Europe. The resulting European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan,
not only facilitated European economic integration but promoted the idea of
shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe. Soviet
refusal either to participate in the Marshall Plan or to allow its satellite
states in Eastern Europe to accept the economic assistance helped to reinforce
the growing division between east and west in Europe.
In 1947–1948, a series of events
caused the nations of Western Europe to become concerned about their physical
and political security and the United States to become more closely involved
with European affairs. The ongoing civil war in Greece, along with tensions in
Turkey, led President Harry S. Truman to assert that the United States would provide
economic and military aid to both countries, as well as to any other nation
struggling against an attempt at subjugation.
A Soviet-sponsored coup in Czechoslovakia resulted in a communist government
coming to power on the borders of Germany. Attention also focused on elections
in Italy as the communist party had made significant gains among Italian
voters. Furthermore, events in Germany also caused concern. The occupation and
governance of Germany after the war had long been disputed, and in mid-1948,
Soviet premier Joseph Stalin chose to test Western resolve by implementing a
blockade against West Berlin, which was then under joint U.S., British, and
French control but surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany. This Berlin
Crisis brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of conflict,
although a massive airlift to resupply the city for the duration of the
blockade helped to prevent an outright confrontation. These events caused U.S.
officials to grow increasingly wary of the possibility that the countries of
Western Europe might deal with their security concerns by negotiating with the
Soviets. To counter this possible turn of events, the Truman Administration
considered the possibility of forming a European-American alliance that would
commit the United States to bolstering the security of Western Europe.
Signing of the Brussels Treaty
The Western European countries were
willing to consider a collective security solution. In response to increasing
tensions and security concerns, representatives of several countries of Western
Europe gathered together to create a military alliance. Great Britain, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty in March,
1948. Their treaty provided collective defense; if any one of these nations was
attacked, the others were bound to help defend it. At the same time, the Truman
Administration instituted a peacetime draft, increased military spending, and
called upon the historically isolationist Republican Congress to consider a
military alliance with Europe. In May of 1948, Republican Senator Arthur H.
Vandenburg proposed a resolution suggesting that the President seek a security
treaty with Western Europe that would adhere to the United Nations charter but
exist outside of the Security Council where the Soviet Union held veto power.
The Vandenburg Resolution passed, and negotiations began for the North Atlantic
Treaty.
In spite of general agreement on the
concept behind the treaty, it took several months to work out the exact terms.
The U.S. Congress had embraced the pursuit of the international alliance, but
it remained concerned about the wording of the treaty. The nations of Western
Europe wanted assurances that the United States would intervene automatically
in the event of an attack, but under the U.S. Constitution the power to declare
war rested with Congress. Negotiations worked toward finding language that
would reassure the European states but not obligate the United States to act in
a way that violated its own laws. Additionally, European contributions to
collective security would require large-scale military assistance from the
United States to help rebuild Western Europe’s defense capabilities. While the
European nations argued for individual grants and aid, the United States wanted
to make aid conditional on regional coordination. A third issue was the
question of scope. The Brussels Treaty signatories preferred that membership in
the alliance be restricted to the members of that treaty plus the United
States. The U.S. negotiators felt there was more to be gained from enlarging
the new treaty to include the countries of the North Atlantic, including
Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and Portugal. Together, these
countries held territory that formed a bridge between the opposite shores of
the Atlantic Ocean, which would facilitate military action if it became
necessary.
The result of these extensive negotiations
was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. In this agreement, the
United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed to consider attack
against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and
defense matters. This collective defense arrangement only formally applied to
attacks against the signatories that occurred in Europe or North America; it
did not include conflicts in colonial territories. After the treaty was signed,
a number of the signatories made requests to the United States for military
aid. Later in 1949, President Truman proposed a military assistance program,
and the Mutual Defense Assistance Program passed the U.S. Congress in October,
appropriating some $1.4 billion dollars for the purpose of building Western
European defenses.
Soon after the creation of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, the outbreak of the Korean War
led the members to move quickly to integrate and coordinate their defense
forces through a centralized headquarters. The North Korean attack on South
Korea was widely viewed at the time to be an example of communist aggression
directed by Moscow, so the United States bolstered its troop commitments to
Europe to provide assurances against Soviet aggression on the European
continent. In 1952, the members agreed to admit Greece and Turkey to NATO and
added the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. West German entry led the Soviet
Union to retaliate with its own regional alliance, which took the form of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and included the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe
as members.
The collective defense arrangements
in NATO served to place the whole of Western Europe under the American “nuclear
umbrella.” In the 1950s, one of the first military doctrines of NATO emerged in
the form of “massive retaliation,” or the idea that if any member was attacked,
the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. The threat
of this form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet
aggression on the continent. Although formed in response to the exigencies of
the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted beyond the end of that conflict, with
membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states. It remains the
largest peacetime military alliance in the world.
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