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.
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.
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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