NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY

TREATY AT A GLANCE

CompletedApril 4, 1949, at Washington, D.C.

SignatoriesBelgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg,

the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the UnitedStates (Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, the Federal Republic ofGermany in 1955, Spain in 1982, the reunited Germany in 1990,

and Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999)

OverviewThe North Atlantic Treaty established the North Atlantic TreatyOrganization (NATO), which had as its purpose the deterrence ofpotential Soviet aggression in Europe, one in a series of suchregional alliances aimed at "containing" the spread of communism.

Historical Background•One of the many effects of the Marshall Plan, America'sscheme for revitalizing a war-tom Europe in the wakeof the Nazi Armageddon, was a hardening of the divi-sion on the Continent created by a growing riftbetween the Soviets and the other great power Allies.Stalin had denounced the plan as a capitalist plot 'evenas he himself was plotting to overthrow the fragile newrepublics of eastern Europe and partition Germany inorder to ring his country with puppet states that could

. serve as military and cultural buffers against the West,whose influence he saw as a threat to his dictatorship.When the Western European states, Great Britain, andthe United States responded to the Stalin-backed Com-munist coup in Czechoslovakia in March 1948 bypressing ahead with the unification of the West Ger-man zones of occupation and the establishment of aWest German currency and government, the Russiansstormed out of the Allied Control Council. Threemonths later, Soviet occupation forces in the easternzone shut off Allied access by road or rail to the west-ern zones of Berlin.

U.S. president Harry 5 Truman was worried aboutthe expansion of Soviet influence, particularly inEurope, and persuaded by the famous "Long Telegram"from Moscow by American diplomat George Kennan,suggesting that a policy of "containment" should beexercised toward Stalin. Truman had already begun toset up a national security apparatus, including a per-

manent Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Strategic Air Com-mand, and the CIA. He had also signed the PACT OF RIO .

which would serve as a model for a series of regionalmutual defense agreements linking the United States tcnations ringing the USSR and its new client states.

Announcing he was ready to "get tough" with theSoviets in what policy mavens such as presidentialadvisor Bernard Baruch and press pundit Walter Lipp-mann were calling the cold war, Truman was forced totest his new policy in response to this latest move bythe Russians in Berlin. Made necessary by the anomalyof an American-British-French zone of interest stucksome 100 miles inside an eastern German occupied bySoviet troops, the Berlin Crisis became a definingmoment in the history of this new cold war. Alliedcommander in Berlin Lucius Clay and Secretary oiState Dean Acheson wanted to flex American muscleand send an armed convoy straight through the Russ-ian zone to Berlin, but the Joint Chiefs and certainlythe British and the French were unwilling to risk pro-voking a war. Instead, Truman responded with animmense and ultimately quite effective airlift to keepWest Berlin supplied with food, fuel, and medicine.

Historians have often wondered what Stalin hopedto accomplish. Perhaps he feared the rearmament of aWest German state and hoped to block it. Perhaps hewas trying to scare the American public to retreat intoits traditional isolationist shell. The real result of theBerlin blockade was to frighten the Western power5into taking stronger measures than they might other-

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wise have taken to contain the Soviet "threat." OnApril 4, 1949, the foreign policy heads of the UnitedStates, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands,Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland,Norway, and Canada met in Washington to found theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, the pre-mier cold war multinational mutual alliance.

TermsThe preamble to the North Atlantic Treaty clearlyestablished the signatories' purpose:

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in thepurposes and principles of the Charter of the UnitedNations and their desire to live in peace with all peo-ples and all governments.

They are determined to safeguard the freedom,common heritage and civilization of their peoples,founded on the principles of democracy, individualliberty and the rule of law.

They seek to promote stability and well-being inthe North Atlantic area.

They are resolved to unite their efforts for collec-tive defence and for the preservation of peace andsecurity.

They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty

But the crux of the North Atlantic Treaty wasArticle 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one ormore of them in Europe or North America shall beconsidered an attack against them all, and conse-quently they agree that, if such an armed attackoccurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of indi-vidual or collective self-defence recognized by Article51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist theParty or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, indi-vidually, and in concert with the other Parties, suchaction as it deems necessary, including the use ofarmed force, to restore and maintain the security ofthe North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as aresult thereof shall immediately be reported to theSecurity Council. Such measures shall be terminatedwhen the Security Council has taken the measuresnecessary to restore and maintain international peaceand security.

NATO conformed to Article 51 of the UNITED

NATIONS CHARTER, which granted nations the right ofcollective defense, but NATO also promoted political,social, and economic ties between the members:

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ARTICLE 1The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter ofthe United Nations, to settle any international disputein which they may be involved by peaceful means insuch a manner that international peace and securityand justice are not endangered, and to refrain in theirinternational relations from the threat or use of forcein any manner inconsistent with the purposes of theUnited Nations.

ARTICLE 2The Parties will contribute toward the further devel-opment of peaceful and friendly international rela-tions by strengthening their free institutions, bybringing about a better understanding of the princi-ples upon which these institutions are founded, andby promoting conditions of stability and well-being.They will seek to eliminate conflict in their interna-tional economic policies and will encourage economiccollaboration between any or all of them.

ConsequencesIf the impetus for the treaty was the increasing inten-sity of the cold war, including the communist coupd'etat in Prague in February 1948 and the Berlin Block-ade, beginning in June 1948, NATO nevertheless beganwithout an established military structure. It took theoutbreak of the Korean War, in June 1950, to promptthe establishment of a NATO military force, the princi-pal element of which was Allied Command Europe,headquartered in Brussels, Belgium (Supreme Head-quarters Allied Powers in Europe [SHAPE)). Policywas made by the North Atlantic Council, which met inBrusseis (it met in Paris until 1967, France havingwithdrawn from the military structure of NATO theyear before). However, the alliance was first and fore-most a military one, and the Military Committee, com-posed of senior military representatives from eachcountry (except Iceland, which had no military forcesbut was represented by a civilian, and France), recom-mended defense measures it considered necessary.

With the end of the cold war and the disbanding ofthe WARSAW PACT Organization, which had been formedby the Soviet bloc to counter NATO, some Europeanleaders called for replacing NATO with some lessexclusively military organization, especially as formercommunist bloc countries now sought entry. In theearly 1990s, the United States took steps to reduce itsNATO presence, substituting for the large standingforces of NATO contingency plans relying on smaller"rapid deployment forces," with reinforcements avail-able from the United States in time of need.