NATO

1949

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty

Organization

Partly to counter Soviet influence after World

War II, Western leaders encouraged regional

economic and political cooperation.

12 Original members~1949

US

Canada

Iceland

Norway

Denmark

The Netherlands

Belgium

Luxemburg

Great Britain

France

Portugal

Italy

Later (1952) Greece and Turkey also joined NATO

1955 (West)

Germany joined NATO

1982

Spain also joined NATO

All of the countries agreed to come to each other’s aid if

attacked.

An attack on one is an attack on all.

The alliance’s goal was the eventual integration of the national armed forces of

the member nations into a unified military command.

In reality, NATO was dominated by the American

military establishment.

A US general (beginning with Eisenhower) was always the supreme commander.

NATO was the first peacetime alliance joined by the United States.

On April 4, 1949, President Truman and diplomats from the US and 11 other countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact.

1955- The Warsaw

Pact

In 1955 , the USSR with its own fears of a

rearmed Germany created a competing

military alliance system, the Warsaw

Pact.

It integrated the armed forces of

Eastern Europe into a unified command

under the USSR

In addition, the USSR recognized East Germany as an independent

state.

Thus, by 1955, Germany had become two

separate nations, each integrated into the

sphere on influence of a superpower.

It was formally called the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance. The treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland

on May 14, 1955.

It was established to counter the alleged threat

from the NATO alliance.

The creation of the Warsaw Pact was prompted by the

integration of a "re-militarized" West Germany

into NATO on May 9, 1955.

Members of the Warsaw Pact:

Soviet Union

Poland

East Germany

Czechoslovakia

Bulgaria

Hungary

Romania

Albania

The communist states of Central

and Eastern Europe were signatories

except Yugoslavia.

The members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if one or more of the

members were attacked.

The treaty also stated that relations among the

signatories were based on mutual

noninterference in internal affairs and respect for

national sovereignty and independence.

The noninterference rule would later be violated

with the Soviet interventions in Hungary (Hungarian Revolution-

1956) and Czechoslavakia (Prague

Spring, 1968).

In both cases the intervening forces

claimed to have been invited, and thus the

rules were not considered formally

violated.

Albania stopped supporting the alliance in 1961 as a

result of the Sino-Soviet spit in which the hard-line

Stalinist government in Albania sided with China,

and officially withdrew from the pact in 1968.