The Origin of NATO
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was founded in 1949 in San Francisco, California. This organization was designed as a peacetime military alliance. The original goal was to stop Germany from re-arming while also containing tensions between the US and the Soviet Union after World War 2 and into the Cold War. The US wanted to rebuild Europe because they thought that if Europe was strong and powerful, it would prevent the expansion of communism. As much as the US wanted to make Europe strong again, there were many setbacks in their quest for progress. The civil war in Greece and the Berlin Crisis were some examples of the conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union during this time that eventually led the Truman Administration to propose a European-American alliance. By doing this, the US hoped to guarantee the security of Western Europe.
The Brussels Treaty was also an important factor in the formation of NATO. Western European nations such as Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed this treaty which essentially said that if one of these countries was attacked, the others would help them. After this was signed, Arthur H. Vandenburg, a Republican senator, proposed that there should be a security agreement, but should be separate than the Security Council (where the Soviet Union had power). After his resolution passed, the NATO negotiations started to form. The US faced the challenge with forming a treaty that didn’t interfere with Congress’s power of declaring war. Also, the Western European countries wanted NATO to only include the countries in the Brussels Treaty plus the US. The US, however, thought that it would be more beneficial to include countries such as Canada, Norway, and Ireland.
The final agreement included the US, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the UK. Also, the agreement said that the attacks only applies to those in Europe or North America meaning that colonial territories were not accounted for. The treaty was signed and within a couple months, the US had received many requests for military aid. This led to the formation of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program which helped build the defenses in Western Europe.
Overall, the main purpose of NATO was to be used as “nuclear umbrella”. It was this idea that if one nation was attacked, then others would come to protect it. Although this was mainly created for the struggles in the Cold War, it has lasted beyond the years of the Cold War. Now, it includes even more nations and remains the largest peacetime military alliance.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/nato
I liked your post and how it expressed in detail the history of NATO. Before we covered WW2 and the Cold War, I had thought of the United Nations and NATO as pretty much the same thing, but learning about the history of these two groups points out key differences. One of the most important differences is that while the United Nations included communist nations, notably the Soviet Union, NATO on the other hand was specifically built against communism. This is also because the United Nations was formed immediately after WW2 while reconciliation was in the realm of possibility, but NATO was created after communism was already determined to be a threat.
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