NATO Founded
On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., by twelve founding members: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, the Benelux countries, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, and Portugal. Article 5 of the treaty — the collective defence clause — committed each member to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. For the United States, it was the first peacetime military alliance in its history, a fundamental break with the tradition of avoiding 'entangling alliances' dating to Washington's Farewell Address. NATO was the institutional embodiment of containment: a permanent military alliance designed to deter Soviet aggression against Western Europe by ensuring that any attack would automatically bring the full military power of the United States, including its nuclear arsenal, into play. The Soviet Berlin Blockade had demonstrated both the Soviet threat and the need for a formal alliance commitment; the Berlin Airlift had demonstrated Western resolve. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952; West Germany's rearmament and NATO membership in 1955 provoked the Soviet response of the Warsaw Pact. NATO would survive the Cold War and expand to incorporate former Warsaw Pact members and even Baltic former Soviet republics, its continued existence a testament to the degree to which the Western security architecture outlasted the threat it was built to counter.
- Year: 1949 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
