NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been a silent partner on the
world
stage for more than half of the century and the most
successful
political-military alliance in history. The United Nations and
their
peacekeeping efforts have had the spotlight for the past few years.
However the
driving force behind any successful agreement or, if needed,
action on the part
of several countries has been because of the strong
foundation and experience of
NATO and its members. The following report
will chronicle the events leading up
to the creation of NATO, its first
decade, the constant struggle with communism
in the decades that proceed, and
finally the challenges for NATO today and in
the future. In the years after
World War II, a new threat encroached upon the
leaders of Western Europe and
their hopes of a stable peace. This threat would
be from the growing
dominance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
in Eastern
Europe. The USSR had an increasing appetite for the smaller countries
to her
west. These aggressive demands for territory and the placing of
installations
in taken countries fueled the fears of many that the USSR was
marching toward
a third world war. Britain and France, not wanting to make the
mistake again
of appeasing this new menace until it was too late, developed the
Dunkirk
Treaty in 1947. This treaty in essence pledged a common defense against
any
aggression. The USSR answered this by creating a European
Communist
organization called the Cominform and it rejected the European
Recovery Program,
which is commonly known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall
Plan, named for the
US Secretary of State, was basically a financial
bailout for the European
nations. These nations were starving because of the
slow and near stopping of
the coal and agricultural industries after WWII.
The US offered millions of
dollars to all of Europe to aid in rebuilding for
four reasons. First, Europe
had been a great marketplace imports and exports
for the US. Second,
historically West Germany had been an industrial hub and
needed to be brought
back to tip-top shape to buffer the expanding USSR.
Third, with its increasing
mass the USSR was becoming a rival to the US.
Lastly, without this aid Western
Europe might look to the USSR for help,
which would make life a lot tougher for
American interests. The year of
1948 was pivotal for Europe. In February, the
Communists in Prague staged
a coup d’etat and the spring brought the beginning
of the Cold War.
Immediately after WWII, Germany was divided in to occupation
zones by
Britain, France, the US, and USSR. The capital of Germany at the time
was
Berlin, which happened to fall in the Soviet zone. The
governing
administration located in Berlin fell, because of the obvious
reason of "too
many cooks spoil the broth". When this happened, the USSR
demanded that Berlin
become solely part of the Soviet zone, since its status
as capital was ruined.
The USSR enforced this ruling by blockading all
land routes into and tried to
force the other powers out of its respective
sectors of Berlin. Eventually the
Berlin Blockade was squelched by a
military airlift that lasted the rest of the
year. The city still remained
divided and became known as East (Soviet
controlled) and West Berlin. This
transgression on the part of the USSR prompted
negotiations between Western
Europe, the US and Canada that resulted in the
North Atlantic Treaty. The
language of the North Atlantic Treaty originally
consisted of its preamble
and fourteen articles. The preamble states that
members will promote common
values and will "unite their efforts for a
collective defense." The key
article of the North Atlantic Treaty is number
five (it’s the one that
inspired my title) it reads, "The Parties agree that
an armed attack against
one or more of them...shall be considered an attack
against them all."
Another interesting article is the last one, number
fourteen, and it calls
for the deposition of the official copies of the treaty
to be kept in the US
Archives. The US already was establishing itself as the
dominant member of an
organization that is supposed to be based on equal
responsibility. After the
ratification of this treaty the structure of the North
Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) began. The highest policy-making body in
NATO is the
North Atlantic Council, which met in Paris until 1967. The council
composed
of permanent delegates from all members was responsible for general
policy,
budgetary outlines, intergovernmental consultation and
administrative
actions. There are two main temporary committees that answer
directly to the
council. Those are the Secretariat, which handles
non-military functions of the
alliance (economic, scientific, cultural, and
environmental issues), and the
Military Committee or the Defense Planning
Committee (DPC), which consists of
the chiefs of staff of the various armed
forces. They meet to discuss military
policies, develop defense plans for
their respective areas, determine the force
requirements, and deploy and
exercise the forces under their command. The forces
directly below the DPC
are the Allied Commands Europe (was first headed by
Eisenhower),
Atlantic, and Channel and the Regional Planning Group (for
North
America). To assist in carrying out their global roles, the council
and the DPC
have established committees to deal with emergencies and the new
threat of
nuclear power. They meet only in a dire situation. However, until
the outbreak
of the Korean War in 1950, NATO had no real military structure.
The Korean War
was at first perceived as part of a worldwide Communist
offensive beginning in
the divided Germany. This perspective lead to the NATO
military force that was
explained in the preceding paragraph. Within NATO’s
first decade the main
military and security forces have come from the US.
Along with this the US was
depended on for the revival of Europe’s economy
and polity. The Korean War
also brought an overall expansion of the
organization. By 1955, Greece, Turkey,
and the Federal Republic of Germany
(West Germany) had entered as members. The
only provisions for West Germany
was not allowed to manufacture NBC (nuclear,
biological, and chemical)
weapons. With the rearmament of West Germany in
progress, the USSR and her
allies decided to created a treaty organization of
their own. The Warsaw
Pact, signed in 1955, combined to powers of Albania,
Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and of course
the
USSR. The members of this communist alliance were under strict control of
the
soviets headquartered in Moscow. Key posts in these satellite countries
were
usually ran by soviet-born or soviet-trained officers and all their
equipment
was standardized to the regulations of the USSR. The structure of
the Warsaw
Treaty Organization (WTO) was similar to NATO. Two major
bodies carried out the
policies of the pact. The first was the Political
Consultative Committee, which
handled all activities except military, and the
Unified Command of Pact Armed
Forces, which had authority over the troops
assigned to certain members. On
paper you can see the similarities, but the
USSR rule with absolute dominance.
When members tried to break away or
try to join NATO, the consequences were
terrifying. In 1956, Hungary tried to
withdrawal from the WTO; the USSR took
unilateral military action against the
revolt killing 200,000 people. Another
member state, Czechoslovakia attempted
to leave and was swiftly forced back by a
soviet invasion. Albania seemed to
find a way out, because of their alliance
with China and some other
ideological reasons, and broke off in 1968. With the
USSR’s undeniable
stranglehold on its neighboring countries in place, the race
began for total
superiority on the global scene over the US and her allies. The
main gauge
for this was nuclear weapon advances and stockpiles. Who could have
the
biggest and best in the shortest amount of time and who would dare to use
it
first? These pressing questions tainted the next three decades and worried
some
of the other NATO members that the US wouldn’t honor their pledge if the
USSR
were to do the unspeakableto Western Europe. NATO members tried to keep
a
positive perspective, but several events caused a sense of dissatisfaction
of
its worth by the end of the sixties. To begin the decade off the USSR
officially
blockaded their side of Berlin by erecting the ‘wall’. At first
the Berlin
Wall consisted only of barbed wire, but people were ‘escaping’
to East
Germany, so an actual concrete wall was constructed with all the
bells and
whistles, like checkpoints with armed guards and minefields. The
people of East
Germany were prisoners in their own country and were not
allowed to contact or
visit family. In addition, the withdrawal of France,
one of the founding
members, in 1966 by President Charles de Gaulle sent
shock waves through the
organization. Although they continued to contribute
to the alliance, they left
the governing duties to the other members. Also
NATO was pressured by the
smaller nation-states to be come members and that
would take a lot of funding,
time, and focus away from the problems in
Eastern Europe. One of the main
factors of the late sixties and early
seventies was America’s involvement in
the Vietnam War. This horrifying war
sapped the US economy, morale, and foreign
policy prowess. Although the 1970s
began with the Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT I), this decade
created more disillusionment by world powers as the
Soviets continued to
rapidly stock their military and nuclear arsenals. In 1979,
NATO
initiated a dual-track program where new defense efforts were coupled
with
new efforts in reconciliation and cooperation. Unfortunately, the steps
taken by
both sides were small and uneventful and usually were retracted
within a short
time. This brings us to the Reagan years, the eighties, and to
the closest
watched political tug-a-war in years. This decade opened with a
deepening crisis
and in 1983 the USSR failed to prevent the deployment of
intermediate-range
ballistic missiles, sent to counteract the ones they had
pointed a Europe’s
major cites. It is possible to say that NATO help greatly
in dissuading the USSR
from following through on attacking Western Europe.
The ‘game’ had gotten
deadly serious and in 1987 both sides agreed to talks.
Out of these talks came
the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty,
which not only gave people a
sense of relief across the world it also began
the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact
and the WTO. The change in the wind prompted
the Berlin Wall that separated a
people for over twenty-five years to be torn
down and Germany was finally
reunified. The late eighties to the mid-nineties
finally saw the beginning of
the end to the Cold War. This time also showed
the world the success of NATO and
the unified efforts of its members in
meeting the challenge of the Communists
and the WTO. NATO had finally shown
itself to be a viable source for
communication and resolution between
factions instead of war. That became more
evident in the 1990s, with the
continued depletion of nuclear arsenals on both
sides, the dissolving of the
Warsaw Pact in 1991, and the continued duties to
help return the countries of
Eastern Europe to normalcy. An example of this is
evident in
Bosnia/Herzegovina and Kosovo. These areas and people have been able
to
strengthen their nationalistic feeling with both encouraging and
disastrous
results. Through the efforts of the UN and NATO forces a peaceful
conclusion may
be in the future for this troubled culture. The organization
has already placed
in the works the inclusion of the Czech Republic (formerly
part of
Czechoslovakia), Hungary, and Poland. These talks are setting the
stage for
NATO’s most significant expansion. These countries will need
modern military
training, upgrades on their communications, command, and air
defense systems at
an estimated cost of between $25 and $35 billion over
thirteen years. The
members of NATO pay out this money, the US share being
approximately $200
million over ten years. There was a time that even the
thought of these
countries entering NATO peacefully was unheard of. These new
members make
NATO’s interests in the Balkans even more timely. Over the
past few years, the
establishment of a long-term stability in the Balkans has
fallen on NATO’s
already overweighed shoulders. The former Yugoslavia is one
area of Europe where
the end of the cold war has not brought about the
general trend towards
openness, democracy and integration that we have seen
elsewhere. Ending this
anomaly will mean looking beyond the time frame of
NATO’s Stabilization Force
in Bosnia. Once the parties realize that settling
differences peacefully and
democratically really is the only viable option,
then Bosnia and other countries
in the region will have the right to the
fullest integration into the
international community. In Kosovo, where the
world community is facing
humanitarian, political and legal dilemmas, a
solution must be found that allows
the Ethnic Albanians more autonomy within
the confines of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia. In finding such a
solution, we must avoid a situation where moral
considerations are pitted
against international law. And we must remember that a
security policy that
doesn’t take as its point of reference the needs of
humanity, risks suffering
the worst possible fate- a slide into irrelevance. In
Kosovo’s immediate
neighborhood, NATO has helped to provide hope and some
stability, as well as
assistance in coping with the refugees in Albania and
Macedonia. The
latter country is hosting a NATO extraction force, ready to
support the
verification mission deployed in Kosovo. Hopefully, the prospect of
long-term
stability, coupled with the desire for economic benefits, will draw
the
entire Balkans back into the European mainstream. None of this will
happen
without NATO continued belief in "collective security". To deal with
these
challenges, there is a need for further improvements in the
inter-operability
and sustainability of alliance forces. The future of NATO
lies in having rapidly
deployable capabilities to fulfill an increasing range
of missions. The military
forces of NATO allies will need to be on the same
wavelength; able to move
effectively and quickly, to communicate with one
another- service to service, as
well as ally to ally- in a world where
information technologies are becoming
part of the modern soldier’s basic kit.
Trying to stay as current as possible
on NATO’s movements is not an easy job
these days. Every hour seems to bring a
new page to NATO’s illustrious
history. We can only sit back and watch the
further developments in the
Balkan region and in the other ‘hotspots’ around
the world, like Korea,
Rwanda, India, and even within the NATO members
themselves. Other important
issues approach on the horizon that will strongly
effect NATO, the
unification of Europe, China’s threats to security and the
questions of a
possible global peace in the millenium. Can NATO meet these
challenges? Can
it evolve in the shadow of the Cold War? The next few years will
unfold an
exciting chapter in the history of the North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization.
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