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NATO.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NATO
TENSIONS WITHIN THE ALLIANCE
NATO AFTER THE COLD WAR
BIBLIOGRAPHY

A creation of the early Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has surprised many commentators by outlasting the conflict that produced it.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NATO

NATO was established by the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949, after over a year's negotiations. Although the treaty referred to cultural and political cooperation (Article 2), the operative clause was Article 5. In it, the twelve signatories—the United States, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Great Britain, Portugal, and Italy—pledged that an attack on one was an attack on all and would lead to them taking whatever measures they deemed necessary, including armed action.

In the minds of those whose initiatives led to the establishment of NATO—most especially British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin—the major problem that faced Western Europe in 1948–1949 was not an immediate invasion by the Soviet army as such, but the possibility that fear of Soviet power would hinder recovery from the traumas of the war period, bringing economic stagnation and poor morale and reducing resistance to the subversive methods that the Soviets were believed to prefer. Bevin argued to the Americans that Europeans needed a sense of security if they were to complete the economic recovery that was the aim of the U.S. Marshall Plan begun in 1947. There are revisionist historians, indeed, who have argued that the establishment of NATO was mainly to provide the necessary preconditions for the Marshall Plan to succeed and for American markets in Western Europe to be revived. Certainly, in its first year or so, NATO had little capacity to actually defend its European members; what it had done, however, was effectively to place them under a guarantee of American nuclear protection. While military planners were initially skeptical of the defensive capabilities of the alliance, for the politicians the main point was to increase the Western European sense of security. Again, revisionists have argued that this may well have had the opposite effect: by provoking Soviet responses and making the Cold War into a more overtly military confrontation, it may well have institutionalized insecurity.

In any event, at the start the treaty was less like a collective defense arrangement between equals than a protectorate of the weak by the strong. The treaty formalized the American intention to remain engaged in European affairs, but the reality was that the U.S. Congress was clear that the U.S. contribution should be strategic air power while the European allies provided the foot-soldiers: no additional U.S. troops were initially assigned to Europe (and indeed U.S. strategic air forces themselves remained outside NATO command). Mutual resentments over "burden-sharing" were to plague NATO throughout its history.

NATO was transformed after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. Elements of organization were put in place to focus it on defense—to move from a fairly loose alliance of like-minded nations (with a central core of Anglo-American strategic coordination) intended to provide a generalized "sense of security" into an integrated military alliance focused on defense against a specific threat. The Korean War moved the U.S. government firmly in the direction of rearmament—and because the communist attack in Korea seemed to suggest a Soviet grand design in which the next target would be Europe, much of this was directed toward strengthening the defensive capabilities of NATO and thereafter the defense function of the alliance was the most prominent—and for many, indeed, the sole reason for the organization's existence. Congress authorized nearly one billion dollars to upgrade NATO's capabilities. At the end of 1950, General Dwight Eisenhower was named first NATO Supreme Commander (SACEUR), followed in 1951 by the establishment of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) at Roquencourt, near Paris. The high-profile appointment of Eisenhower was as clear a sign of American commitment as the concurrent dispatch of American ground forces and B-29 bombers to Europe. Greece and Turkey, which had been under NATO guarantees from the start, were admitted to membership in 1952 (underlining the anti-Soviet as opposed to "North Atlantic community" nature of the alliance). Permanent political and military structures were finalized on 25 February 1952.

However, with the growth of U.S. commitments elsewhere, especially in Asia, it was expected that European contributions to their own defense would increase—and to many Americans this had to involve the Germans, who were, after all, being accorded protection by the alliance. France was concerned to ensure that German economic recovery took place within a structure that prevented a resurgence of the German military threat. On the other hand, NATO's strategy was to fight on a defensive line as far east as possible—any other strategy would alienate key members such as Norway and the Netherlands. This meant fighting in Germany, and France shared the desire of its allies to find a way of bringing German military potential into the balance. The way forward had been suggested in the French Pleven Plan in the autumn of 1950. This proposed the establishment of a European army, in which the Germans would participate in small integrated units, which meant there would be no German General Staff or defense ministry. By May 1952, the plan had developed into the European Defense Community (EDC), and the proposed German contribution had been raised to regimental level. However, neither the British nor Americans would join the EDC, merely offering pledges of aid. The French army, heavily engaged outside Europe in the French Empire, was not itself keen on being submerged in the EDC, but also feared that with only the small nations as counterbalance, it would become dominated by the German military. As a consequence, the French Assembly rejected the European Defense Treaty in May 1954. However, the allies had become accustomed by now to think in terms of West German involvement, and under the initiative of British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, West Germany and Italy were brought into the Western Union that had been established by the Brussels Treaty (1948) by Britain, France, and the Benelux countries, with German troops to be wholly part of the forces of this renamed Western European Union (WEU). On this basis, France accepted West Germany as the fifteenth member of NATO (in the name of all Germany). West Germany was scheduled to contribute twelve divisions, under WEU command, though it pledged not to manufacture nuclear, chemical, or bacteriological weapons. The Soviets had long feared West German rearmament and responded by drawing its satellites together in the Warsaw Pact.

TENSIONS WITHIN THE ALLIANCE

Although NATO celebrated its tenth anniversary in style at its new headquarters in Porte Dauphiné, Paris, trouble was brewing. Charles de Gaulle had returned to power in France, and viewed NATO as an instrument of Anglo-American hegemony. At the same time, some in the United States believed that since Western Europe had now recovered so well and was taking steps toward integration, the Europeans should shoulder a greater share of their own defense, with a reduction of American commitments. These tensions came to a head with the American offer of Polaris nuclear missiles to the British in 1962—de Gaulle declined a similar offer and saw this as final proof that the British were too closely under U.S. influence to fit into his vision of Europe as a "third force" between the United States and the Soviet Union. This feeling was reinforced when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy acted during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 without coordinating with his NATO allies (except informal contacts with Britain). The Kennedy administration's rejection of the doctrine of massive nuclear retaliation in favor of "flexible response" also caused problems with America's allies, who feared the expense of competing with the Soviets in conventional forces, and worried that the American nuclear guarantee was being softened. Conversely, the U.S. desire to share the burden of NATO's defenses more equally led the Americans to press for European increases in conventional armaments. Some in the Kennedy administration favored a Multilateral Force as the means of achieving this, but this scheme foundered on unwillingness on both sides of the Atlantic to go far along the route of removing forces from national command and a preference to maintain NATO as essentially an intergovernmental alliance. The thaw in East-West relations that followed the Cuban crisis allowed many Europeans to be drawn to de Gaulle's concept. At the same time, U.S. actions in Vietnam were alienating many younger European voters. In addition, the direct nuclear threat to U.S. cities posed by Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) raised doubts whether the United States would actually risk destruction in the event of an attack on Western Europe by Soviet conventional forces. In 1966 de Gaulle withdrew the French from NATO's military command structures, protesting the dominance of American commanders. The military headquarters of NATO was moved to Mons and the political one to Brussels.

In response, an initiative by the smaller allies produced the Harmel Report, The Future Tasks of the Alliance (1967), which many have claimed redefined the nature of NATO in such a way that enabled it to survive the disappearance of the threat that brought it into being. There is a case, however, for arguing that Pierre Charles Harmel (Belgian foreign minister) was reiterating the security (as opposed to defense) motivations that were the driving force for those who founded it back in 1949. What the report did was to address the changed situation of the 1960s, which some Gaullists were claiming had made NATO redundant. While committing NATO to engage actively in the process of détente—reducing tensions with the Warsaw Pact—it also, most significantly in the long term, stated in firm terms the case for NATO to be seen as an organization serving the security needs of its members, rather than a purely defensive military alliance whose existence was dependent on a level of threat from a particular foe.

Under the impetus of the Harmel Report, NATO followed a twin-track policy of détente and modernization. Détente meant constructive dialogue with the Warsaw Pact, based on a recognition of their common interest in stability in Europe and restraint in the use of nuclear weapons. This in turn meant that NATO could consider reduction of forces and their adaptation to a wider range of uses in line with the flexible response at the heart of Harmel—even though NATO had but recently expressed its commitment to a strategy of first use of nuclear weapons as a defense against a conventional threat from Soviet forces. In 1970 it was announced that reduction in nuclear or conventional forces would only come if the Soviet Union reduced its forces; dialogue began on conventional forces reduction on 5 October 1971. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union and United States were discussing reduction of numbers of warheads and limitations to antiballistic missile systems in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and signed the SALT I Treaty on 26 May 1972. On 30 May the NATO Council agreed to participate in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki, in which balanced force reductions were to be discussed with the Warsaw Pact. Despite the final act of the CSCE that called for force reductions and peaceful conflict resolution, and progress in slowing the nuclear arms race, in 1976 NATO reaffirmed its nuclear first use policy and rejected demands to restrict itself to a doctrine of nuclear usage only in response to nuclear aggression. Within NATO, some tensions remained: in 1974 Greece withdrew from the integrated military structures, citing a desire for military independence similar to that of the French. This was connected to the Cyprus crisis and Greek internal politics; with changes in the Greek government, Greece rejoined the military structures in 1980. A year later, NATO added its sixteenth member with the accession of Spain, which now had a democratic government.

By this time détente had given way to increased tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. SALT II was not ratified and U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan sought European cooperation in isolating the Soviet Union in punishment for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. While some European leaders, such as Britain's Margaret Thatcher, supported Reagan, others had reservations about the revival of Cold War attitudes. Some of the structures set up in the détente period therefore endured, though NATO's withdrawal of 1,400 nuclear warheads from Europe in October 1983 was overshadowed by the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons that were not covered in the SALT agreement. Fears that Europe would be the battleground for a "limited" nuclear exchange of cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20s led to a revival of antinuclear protests in many Western European countries. The tension was eased after Reagan's reelection in November 1984 and the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in March 1985. Talks on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) were restarted. The United States and Soviet Union agreed at Geneva in November 1985 to cuts of up to 50 percent in their nuclear arsenals. In this atmosphere, relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact warmed once more and in 1986 the Conference on Disarmament in Europe agreed to mutual observation of military maneuvers, and in February 1987 talks on reducing conventional forces were resumed. In December the United States and Soviet Union agreed to eliminate all land-based INF missiles.

NATO was in a sense a passive observer of the dramatic changes that followed in Europe. The Soviet Union announced 15 percent force reductions in Europe in January 1989 and began a process of disengagement from its Eastern European satellites, which resulted in the rapid disappearance of their communist regimes, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and in 1990 the reunification of Germany. At a stroke, NATO's frontiers were moved significantly eastward. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.

NATO AFTER THE COLD WAR

These events posed a huge challenge to NATO. Many argued that with the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself, NATO had won its struggle, and therefore had no reason to continue to exist. Isolationism returned to the political agenda in the United States, and U.S. congressmen once more raised the issue of burden sharing. As we have seen, however, NATO had already redefined itself as an organization designed to promote security through stability and collective action as much as a defensive alliance against a particular threat, and generally NATO leaders, faced with the uncertainties of these startling changes in Europe, clung to NATO as an element of stability—or at least as an instrument to manage change. NATO reiterated the role laid out by Harmel. In July 1990 at its London summit, NATO declared it would be a pillar of European and Transatlantic security, while also, by stating that it was extending the hand of friendship to Eastern European countries, attempting to show its concern with stability and the control of nuclear weapons in the context of the demise of the Warsaw Pact. At Rome in 1991 a new Strategic Concept was announced, declaring that the greatest threat to security was instability, often through the activities of nationalist or terrorist groups. It was recognized that the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (the former CSCE) had a role in bringing stability to Europe. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council was set up, with 16 NATO countries and 9 others, becoming in 1997 the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council with 40 members (46 by 2001). At Brussels in 1994, the Partnership for Peace was formed to promote defense cooperation.

However, while NATO made progress in defining a future for itself, the strains and tensions with the organization, which had always been present, were naturally increased as the common threat from the Soviet Union vanished. The first test of the reality of NATO's commitment to its new role was in the long crisis as Yugoslavia disintegrated. It was in Bosnia, in January 1996, that NATO troops fired their first shots in action. Deep divisions were revealed between the Europeans and Americans over the attitude to take toward the Serbs (the Americans wanted more forthright condemnation) and what action to take (the Europeans resented American reluctance to send troops as part of the peacekeeping mission). Many began to question NATO's future when it could not coordinate a policy toward events in the heart of Europe.

Finally, in 1997, the idea of the Partnership for Peace apparently offered progress on two of the most thorny questions for NATO as it approached its fiftieth birthday: could former Warsaw Pact countries become members (without damaging relations with Russia, which were already sensitive because of the Serbian situation), and what should NATO's relationship to United Nations (UN) peacekeeping efforts be? The Partnership provided for greater contributions to the latter, beginning with missions to the former Yugoslav republics. It also made possible the NATO-Russia Founding Act signed in Paris in 1997, establishing the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC). This reduced Russian hostility to the expansion of NATO eastward, which duly happened with the membership of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. Through the PJC, Russian troops took part in peacekeeping forces in Bosnia (Implementation Force [IFOR] and Stabilization Force [SFOR]). Tensions remained with the Russians, especially when the crisis flared up in Kosovo in 1999, but this was resolved eventually by the Russians joining the peacekeeping forces there (Kosovo Force [KFOR]).

There was a show of solidarity by NATO members after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, with Secretary-General George Robertson invoking Article 5, but this crumbled in the face of the determination of the George W. Bush administration to take whatever actions it felt necessary, regardless of the opinion of allies, in its "war on terror." While NATO was not directly involved as a body in the operations in Afghanistan, it became involved subsequently in the efforts to pacify the country in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban, taking control in August 2003 of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in its first major operation outside Europe. Germany and France, however, had deep misgivings about Bush's approach and opposed the attack on Iraq in 2003. This became a NATO issue when they vetoed American requests to strengthen Turkey in advance of the attack. To many observers, expecting it since 1990, NATO at last seemed to be coming apart at the seams. This has not, as of 2005, happened, and it may be that the habits of cooperation, and the level of integration of military forces, including intelligence (despite NATO's remaining essentially an intergovernmental organization), are strong enough to prevent an actual breakup. Some argue that NATO had more the appearance of an alliance than the reality by the turn of the twenty-first century, but it has proved itself an adaptable instrument for articulating and advancing the security interests of its members, and must in consequence be seen as one of the more enduring, and successful, alliances in history. Tensions remain, especially between the United States and Great Britain on one hand and Germany and France on the other, with moves to develop defense structures for the European Union seen by the Americans as threatening the integrity of the alliance. On the other hand, NATO has continued to expand, with seven new members joining formally in 2004—Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. NATO forces and command structures have been adapted to provide rapid reaction forces to be deployed anywhere in the world.