TheNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a political and military collective defense alliance founded on April 4, 1949 by the North Atlantic Treaty. It was born in the climate of the Cold War, and is intended to discourage any aggression by the USSR by assuring the countries of Western Europe of the permanent military support of the United States which had been lacking to them during the first Hitlerian aggressions, at the start of World War II. The main objective of NATO is to guarantee security in the North Atlantic region through a collective military defense system.
NATO founding members and treaty provisions
The Atlantic Alliance was concluded in 1949 between twelve countries:Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the United States, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom. It then received the accession of Greece and Turkey (February 1952) and, after the signing of the Paris Agreements (Oct. 23, 1954), of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The core provisions of the treaty were contained in Article 5:"The parties agree that an armed attack on any one or more of them, occurring in Europe or North America, shall be considered an attack directed against all parties and, accordingly, they agree that, if such an attack occurs, each of them, in the exercise of the right of self-defence, individual or collective, recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the party or parties thus attacked by immediately undertaking individually, and in agreement with the other parties, such action it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and ensure security in the North Atlantic region. .
The area covered by the treaty was thus defined by article 6:"...an attack against the territory of one of the parties in Europe or North America , against the French departments of Algeria (mention deleted in January 1963, following the independence of Algeria), against the territory of Turkey or against the islands placed under the jurisdiction of one of the parties in the North Atlantic region, north of the Tropic of Cancer".
The Atlantic Alliance presented itself not only as a defensive military alliance animated by the same strategic concepts, but also as an effort to create a community of countries animated by the same political ideals .
NATO Integrated Military Command
Three supreme commands were created:the command in Europe, the command in the Atlantic and the command in the Channel area. Appointed in December 1950 Supreme Commander in Europe. Eisenhower established his headquarters (SHAPE, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) at Rocquencourt, near Versailles. The seat of the Atlantic Council was fixed in Paris. Initially based essentially on American power, NATO was strengthened during the 1950s by the development of Western European armies, which received significant financial assistance from the United States. In response to NATO, the USSR set up the Warsaw Pact organization (1955).
From 1957 it was decided that the United States would permanently maintain nuclear forces in European countries of NATO. In the 1960s, however, the first developments of detente caused a relaxation in the ties between the countries of the Atlantic Alliance. Having provided France with a national nuclear deterrent, General de Gaulle opposed plans for the supranational integration of the forces of the Atlantic Alliance. While remaining in the Alliance, France withdrew from NATO on July 1, 1966; SHAPE was then transferred from Rocquencourt to Belgium, and shortly after, the Atlantic Council was established in Brussels.
In June 1974, the fifteen member countries of the Alliance adopted an "Atlantic declaration" which noted that the 1949 treaty had provided the basis of their security by making possible detente and that it had consecrated the solidarity of destiny of the member countries; these affirmed that the presence of North American forces in Europe remained indispensable. On May 31, 1982, Spain, newly governed by socialists, was admitted to the organization.
Enlargement and evolution of the Atlantic Alliance
In 1984, the balance of the classical armed forces appeared in favor of the Warsaw Pact. The installation, from 1977, of Soviet SS 20 missiles with three nuclear heads capable of reaching all of Western Europe led NATO, from 1983, to install its Pershing II rockets in Western Europe. The agreement about these Euromissiles, negotiated in Dec. 1987, and its positive consequences on all relations between East and West forced the Alliance to a strategic review. It had to take into account the pan-European aspirations of most communist countries, the USSR in the first place. But the collapse of the latter led to questioning the very function of NATO.
The breakup of the Soviet bloc was followed by a period of reflection on the purpose of the organization. While the WEU, which had been dormant since the 1960s, appeared to be a possible European pillar of the Alliance, the question of a possible enlargement of the Alliance to the former countries of the East aroused strong opposition on the part of Moscow. Russia, fearing being isolated from the rest of Europe by an extension of NATO from which it would be excluded, saw itself proposing in January 1994 a “partnership for peace” with vague outlines, but open to all European countries.
After the reintegration of France into the military committee of the Organization (1996), NATO signed in May 1997 with Russia a precise cooperation agreement while a process of enlargement intended to welcome the countries of Central Europe began. In March 1999, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined the Alliance. The same month, the Atlantic forces bombarded Serbia to obtain the withdrawal of its troops from Kosovo:it was the first intervention of the Alliance against a sovereign country. The same year, British Defense Minister George Robertson succeeded Javier Solana as Secretary General of the organization.
At the Prague summit (November 2002), NATO invites seven countries to enter into accession talks with the Alliance:Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia , Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Member countries also agree on a new military concept for defense against terrorism. The accession of the seven new member countries is effective on March 29, 2004. The summit of Riga (November 2006) sees the failure of the will of the United States to transform NATO into a more political organization, endowed with a global mission at the scale, in a context marked by the Alliance's difficulties in Afghanistan.
As 2019 celebrated its 70th anniversary, NATO's raison d'être is being debated in an increasingly multipolar world, while the United States is increasingly disengaging from international organizations and that serious dissensions sometimes oppose the members of the Alliance.
To go further
- History of NATO, by Charles Zorgbibe. Complex, 2002.
- NATO in the 21st Century:The Transformation of a Legacy, by Olivier Kempf. Editions du Rocher, 2019.
- History of international relations:From 1945 to the present day, by Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and André Kaspi. Armand Colin, 2009.