MILESTONES: 1945–1952

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and
several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Signing of the NATO Treaty

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the
Western Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe
struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security. The former required a massive
influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes re-establish industries and produce food, and the
latter required assurances against a resurgent Germany or incursions from the Soviet Union.
The United States viewed an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the
prevention of communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary of State George
Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. The resulting European
Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, not only facilitated European economic integration but
promoted the idea of shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe.
Soviet refusal either to participate in the Marshall Plan or to allow its satellite states in Eastern
Europe to accept the economic assistance helped to reinforce the growing division between east
and west in Europe.

In 1947–1948, a series of events caused the nations of Western Europe to become concerned
about their physical and political security and the United States to become more closely involved
with European a!airs. The ongoing civil war in Greece, along with tensions in Turkey, led
President Harry S. Truman to assert that the United States would provide economic and military
aid to both countries, as well as to any other nation struggling against an attempt at
subjugation. A Soviet-sponsored coup in Czechoslovakia resulted in a communist government
coming to power on the borders of Germany. Attention also focused on elections in Italy as the
communist party had made significant gains among Italian voters. Furthermore, events in
Germany also caused concern. The occupation and governance of Germany after the war had
long been disputed, and in mid-1948, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin chose to test Western resolve
by implementing a blockade against West Berlin, which was then under joint U.S., British, and
French control but surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany. This Berlin Crisis brought
the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of conflict, although a massive airlift to
resupply the city for the duration of the blockade helped to prevent an outright confrontation.
These events caused U.S. o"cials to grow increasingly wary of the possibility that the countries
of Western Europe might deal with their security concerns by negotiating with the Soviets. To
counter this possible turn of events, the Truman Administration considered the possibility of
forming a European-American alliance that would commit the United States to bolstering the
security of Western Europe.

Signing of the Brussels Treaty

The Western European countries were willing to consider a collective security solution. In
response to increasing tensions and security concerns, representatives of several countries of
Western Europe gathered together to create a military alliance. Great Britain, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty in March, 1948. Their treaty
provided collective defense; if any one of these nations was attacked, the others were bound to
help defend it. At the same time, the Truman Administration instituted a peacetime draft,
increased military spending, and called upon the historically isolationist Republican Congress to
consider a military alliance with Europe. In May of 1948, Republican Senator Arthur H.
Vandenburg proposed a resolution suggesting that the President seek a security treaty with
Western Europe that would adhere to the United Nations charter but exist outside of the Security
Council where the Soviet Union held veto power. The Vandenburg Resolution passed, and
negotiations began for the North Atlantic Treaty.

In spite of general agreement on the concept behind the treaty, it took several months to work
out the exact terms. The U.S. Congress had embraced the pursuit of the international alliance,
but it remained concerned about the wording of the treaty. The nations of Western Europe
wanted assurances that the United States would intervene automatically in the event of an
attack, but under the U.S. Constitution the power to declare war rested with Congress.
Negotiations worked toward finding language that would reassure the European states but not
obligate the United States to act in a way that violated its own laws. Additionally, European
contributions to collective security would require large-scale military assistance from the
United States to help rebuild Western Europe’s defense capabilities. While the European nations
argued for individual grants and aid, the United States wanted to make aid conditional on
regional coordination. A third issue was the question of scope. The Brussels Treaty signatories
preferred that membership in the alliance be restricted to the members of that treaty plus the
United States. The U.S. negotiators felt there was more to be gained from enlarging the new
treaty to include the countries of the North Atlantic, including Canada, Iceland, Denmark,
Norway, Ireland, and Portugal. Together, these countries held territory that formed a bridge
between the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which would facilitate military action if it
became necessary.

President Truman inspecting a tank produced under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program
The result of these extensive negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.
In this agreement, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy,
Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed to consider
attack against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and defense
matters. This collective defense arrangement only formally applied to attacks against the
signatories that occurred in Europe or North America; it did not include conflicts in colonial
territories. After the treaty was signed, a number of the signatories made requests to the United
States for military aid. Later in 1949, President Truman proposed a military assistance program,
and the Mutual Defense Assistance Program passed the U.S. Congress in October, appropriating
some $1.4 billion dollars for the purpose of building Western European defenses.

Soon after the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the outbreak of the Korean
War led the members to move quickly to integrate and coordinate their defense forces through a
centralized headquarters. The North Korean attack on South Korea was widely viewed at the
time to be an example of communist aggression directed by Moscow, so the United States
bolstered its troop commitments to Europe to provide assurances against Soviet aggression on
the European continent. In 1952, the members agreed to admit Greece and Turkey to NATO and
added the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. West German entry led the Soviet Union to
retaliate with its own regional alliance, which took the form of the Warsaw Treaty Organization
and included the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as members.

The collective defense arrangements in NATO served to place the whole of Western Europe
under the American “nuclear umbrella.” In the 1950s, one of the first military doctrines of
NATO emerged in the form of “massive retaliation,” or the idea that if any member was
attacked, the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. The threat of this
form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression on the continent.
Although formed in response to the exigencies of the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted
beyond the end of that conflict, with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet
states. It remains the largest peacetime military alliance in the world.