60 YEARS OF NATO
This year the world’s most important international military alliance, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is celebrating its 60th birthday. In its
long history NATO helped Europe get back on its feet after WWII and
has protected it from communist threats in the Cold War. Later, NATO
changed from a symbolic divider of two global competing ideologies to
a cooperative security structure for the whole of Europe, whose primary
goals have become peacekeeping and crisis management. A new Secretary General will also be inaugurated this year: Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
the former Prime Minister of Denmark, who will replace Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer on the 1st of August.
Timeline of NATO
1949
1955
1966
1967
1995
1999
Twelve countries sign the treaty
on the 4th of April
in Washington DC:
Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, France,
Britain, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands,
Norway, Portugal
and the United
States.
Western
Germany joins
NATO. The Soviet
Union and eight
Eastern European states react
by creating the
Warsaw Pact,
uniting all communist countries in a
system of mutual
defence.
France leaves
the military
structure of NATO
entirely, although
it continues to
participate fully in
the activities of the
political bodies of
NATO.
NATO’s new
headquarters are
opened in Brussels.
The beginning of the first
military operation
of NATO since its
founding: troops
are deployed
and airstrikes are
launched in Bosnia
to intervene in the
Balkan War.
Three former
members of the
Warsaw Pact join
NATO: the Czech
Republic, Hungary
and Poland.
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Origin of NATO
In the aftermath of WWII numerous events
enforced the division between East and West,
and Europe-US and the Soviet Union soon
changed from allies to enemies. Especially the
wave of terror by Stalin in Central and Eastern
Europe, the coup d’état in Czechoslovakia
and the Berlin Blockade all contributed to the
belief that Stalin was out to conquer Western
Europe. The Soviet Union became an increasingly dangerous threat to Western Europe and
it was established that further protection was
needed through a new alliance countering
the influence of Stalinist communism.
It was the US that set the first plans for
a Transatlantic Organization, since WWII had
left a recovering Europe virtually unarmed
against Soviet threats. And after Harry S.
Truman’s victory in the 1948 US presidential election, he promised that he would offer
help to all those European countries seeking
defense. His new Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Dean Acheson, subsequently prepared a new
treaty, the NATO, and on the 4th of April
1949 the text was signed in Washington DC
by the twelve countries that had participated
in the negotiations. Crucial to this new treaty
was article 5, obliging all members to aid
in collective defense if one of the allies was
victim of a Soviet attack. However, in its first
years NATO remained primarily a political tool,
it was only with the outbreak of the Korean
War in December 1950 that concrete military
plans where deemed necessary and Eisenhower was appointed as commander of the
(limited) NATO-troops.
The Warsaw Pact
In 1955, the Soviet Union formed its own
equivalent of the NATO, the Warsaw Pact,
an organization of communist countries in
Central and Eastern Europe. It was established
in Warsaw on the 14th of May in a direct response to the admission of West Germany to
the NATO, which took place just five days
earlier. This was perceived by the Soviet Union
as a direct threat to Eastern countries and they
decided an Alliance countering NATO had to
be created.
Founding members were the Soviet Union
along with seven other Eastern European
countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
Romania, Hungary, Poland and East Germany.
Similar to the NATO, the Warsaw Pact stated
in article 4 that members were to engage in
mutual defense if one of them was attacked.
In 1991 the treaty was officially dissolved in
Prague after the Soviet Union had fully disintegrated and most of the Communist governments had fallen.
2001
2002
2003
2004
2009
After the terrorist
attacks on the 11th of
September, article 5
is invoked for the first
time in NATO history
to commence mutual
NATO operations
against world-wide
terrorism.
The NATO-Russia
Council is created in
Rome, which includes
Russia in many of the
Alliance’s decisions. This
further enforces cooperation between the
two former adversaries,
after the first collaboration was initiated in
June 1997 in Paris.
NATO takes over the
full military command
of the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in Afghanistan.
This is the first time
in its history to take
charge of a mission
outside the North Atlantic area.
Seven other former
Warsaw Pact states are
admitted into NATO:
Bulgaria, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, Slovakia and
Slovenia.
60th Birthday of
NATO. Albania and
Croatia are formally introduced, adding up to
a total of 28 independent NATO-members.
France returns to the
alliance completely.
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France: an early breach in NATO’s
unity
Another obstacle manifested itself in 1958
when President of France, Charles de Gaulle,
doubted the credibility of NATO and was
unhappy with the unacceptably strong role of
the US in the alliance. He demanded that a tripartite directorate were to be created where
France was to be elevated to the same level
of importance as the UK and US. But after
the response turned out to be unsatisfactory, France gradually decreased its support to
NATO in 1959 and started the build-up of an
independent French defense force. Later, in
1966, France withdrew entirely from NATO’s
military structure in further protest over American dominance over the Alliance. One of the
main consequences was the formation of the
French Force de Frappe (Strike Force), a triad
of land-, sea- and air Nuclear Forces, making
France the third largest nuclear force in the
world after the US and Russia.
Despite continuing dissatisfaction over American influence in European security, France rejoined NATO’s Military Committee in 1995 and
started to intensify working relations with the
military structure. However, it wasn’t until the
election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in
2007 that France’s military position was thoroughly reformed, resulting in the full return of
France into NATO membership on the 4th of
April of this year. It also rejoined the integrated
military command of NATO, but remains an independent nuclear deterrent.
NATO in the post-Cold War era
After the Cold war, NATO saw its primary
adversary the Soviet Union disappear, therefore requiring a thorough strategic re-evaluation
of its purpose, nature and tasks. Consequently, since the beginning of the 1990s NATO has
been able to take a wider view of security in
which building up trust and developing cooperation with non-member countries plays an
important role.
A significant development in NATO since
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been
the entry of former Warsaw Pact states, a fact
that has been deteriorating relations between
NATO members and Russia, as it sees the incorporation of the old Eastern Bloc into NATO
as an unnecessary hostility. The first countries
that accepted to join the NATO were the
Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland on the
12th of March 1999. The main goal of this
expansion into Eastern Europe was to secure
the newly created democracies of Eastern and
Central Europe into Western influence by intensifying their relationship with NATO. For
Russia, a country that was trying to regain its
former status as great power, it was clear that
countries joining NATO were primarily seeking
defense from possible Russian aggression.
As compensation for this expansion into old
Warsaw Pact territory, a charter was created
enabling talks on multiple levels between
NATO and Russia. This was later followed by
the creation of a NATO-Russia Council in
2002, which incorporates Russia in the largest
part of NATO-decisions (although military
cooperation or right to veto isn’t included).
Further expansion came in 2004 with the
admission of seven Northern and Eastern European countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.
The latest countries to have been accepted as
members of NATO were Croatia and Albania
on the 1st of April of this year. Currently, two
other former Warsaw Pact members, Georgia
and Ukraine, are also trying to be integrated
into NATO, but Russia has been increasingly
declaring that it is unhappy with growing
proximity of NATO-countries, and tension over
the further enlargement of NATO is high.
Furthermore, the collapse of the Soviet
Union has resulted in a profound identity crisis
in NATO. At the heart of this crisis lies the different perception the US and Europe have
to the new purpose of NATO in a post 9/11
world. The US has wanted to reform NATO
to an international anti-terror organization,
which would be used to spread democracy all
around the world. Europe, however, still perceives the alliance mainly as a stabilizer in its
own continent. It seems NATO’s primary goal
should be to redefine its purpose in a multilateral and complex world, and to find the best
way to fulfill its commitment of spreading stability and security.
Pieter Stevens;
of the Catholic University of Leuven