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Concept Version 11
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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Originally created in response to the Soviet threat, NATO is an intergovernmental mutual defense organization.

Learning Objective

  • Describe the purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)


Key Points

    • NATO was created by the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, partly as a response to the Soviet Blockade of Berlin.
    • The original members of NATO included the Treaty of Brussels members (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the UK), but also added Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and the U.S.
    • NATO's goal was to be a mutual defense organization: an armed attack against any one member would be considered an attack against them all. This provision was stated in Article 5 of the NATO agreement.
    • In its early years, NATO primarily existed as a political organization. However, the Korean War united NATO members against the communist threat, and galvanized the creation of an integrated command structure.
    • In 1952, Greece and Turkey joined NATO. In 1954, the Soviet Union suggested it should join, but NATO members refused, fearing the Soviet's intentions were to weaken the alliance from the inside.
    • When West Germany was integrated into NATO in 1955, the Soviet Union responded by forming the Warsaw Pact.
    • NATO did not initiate any military intervention until after the end of the Cold War, first in Yugoslavia and then in Afghanistan. 

Terms

  • Warsaw Pact

    A pact (long-term alliance treaty) signed on May 14, 1955 in Warsaw by the Soviet Union and its Communist military allies in Europe; it was comparable and opposed to NATO.

  • Korean War

    (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) a war between Communist-led North Korea and US-aligned South Korea. It was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II.


Full Text

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.

Beginning of NATO

The Treaty of Brussels, signed on March 17, 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. This treaty, and the Soviet Berlin Blockade, led to the creation of the Western European Union's Defense Organization in September 1948. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism, so talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately. These new negotiations resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. This Treaty formally created NATO.

NATO's Purpose

In Article 5 of the charter, the members agreed that an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all. Consequently they agreed that, if an armed attack occurred, each of them would assist the member being attacked, taking such action as it deemed necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. The treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor. Although obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so, although it is assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily.

NATO and the Cold War

During the Cold War, doubts over the strength of the relationship between Europe and the U.S. ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defense against a prospective Soviet invasion. These doubts led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.

For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association; the first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. 

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent threat of all Communist countries working together, and forced the alliance to develop concrete military plans. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was formed to direct forces in Europe, and began work under Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1951. In September 1950, the NATO Military Committee called for an ambitious buildup of conventional forces to meet the Soviets, subsequently reaffirming this position at the February 1952 meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Lisbon. The Lisbon conference sought to provide the forces necessary for NATO's Long-Term Defence Plan.

In September 1952, the first major NATO maritime exercises began; Exercise Mainbrace brought together 200 ships and over 50,000 personnel to practice the defence of Denmark and Norway. Other major exercises that followed included Exercise Grand Slam and Exercise Longstep, naval and amphibious exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, Italic Weld, a combined air-naval-ground exercise in northern Italy, Grand Repulse, involving the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR), the Netherlands Corps and Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), Monte Carlo, a simulated atomic air-ground exercise involving the Central Army Group, and Weldfast, a combined amphibious landing exercise in the Mediterranean Sea involving American, British, Greek, Italian and Turkish naval forces.

New Members

Greece and Turkey joined the alliance in 1952, forcing a series of controversial negotiations over how to bring the two countries into the military command structure. In 1954, the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe. NATO countries, fearing that the Soviet Union's motive was to weaken the alliance, ultimately rejected this proposal.

The incorporation of West Germany into the organization on 9 May 1955 was described as "a decisive turning point" in the history of Europe. A major reason for Germany's entry into the alliance was that without German manpower, it would have been impossible to field enough conventional forces to resist a Soviet invasion.

Warsaw Pact

One of the immediate results of West Germany's integration into NATO was the creation of the Warsaw Pact, which was signed on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and East Germany. The Warsaw Pact was a formal response to West Germany's integration, and clearly delineated the two opposing sides of the Cold War. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, there was no direct confrontation between them. Instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs.

Cold War European Military Alliances Map

During the Cold War, most of Europe was divided between two alliances. Members of NATO are shown in blue, mostly in western Europe plus Greece and Turkey, with members of the Warsaw Pact in red, in eastern Europe.

Post-Cold War NATO

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization became drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Cold War rivals, which culminated with several former Warsaw Pact states joining the alliance in 1999 and 2004.

The September 2001 attacks signalled the only occasion in NATO's history that Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty has been invoked as an attack on all NATO members. After the 9/11 attack, troops were deployed to Afghanistan under NATO's leadership, and the organization continues to operate in a range of roles, including sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations and most recently enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya.

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