A few years after the end of the second world war that left Europe in ruins, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was part of a broader project. The US administration under President Harry Truman saw in a transatlantic alliance a powerful instrument to deter the expansionism of the communist Soviet Union (USSR), avoid the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encourage European political integration.
The beginnings
On the other side of the Atlantic, in response to increasing tensions among the victorious western powers and the USSR, several western European democracies considered collective security solutions. On 17 March 1948, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg first signed the Brussels Treaty establishing the Western Union (WU), an intergovernmental defence alliance (to become the Western European Union/WEU in 1954). Then, two years later, after extensive negotiations, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949 in Washington with the 12 founding members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. NATO was born. In article V of the NATO treaty the new allies agreed that “an armed attack against one or more of them (…) shall be considered an attack against them all”.
The start of the cold war
Against the backdrop of the first Soviet nuclear bomb tested a few months later and the start of the Korean war in 1950 marking the beginning of the cold war, the new allies urgently needed a military structure to effectively coordinate their actions. In 1951, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was established near Versailles in France, with US General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). A year later, a permanent civilian secretariat was installed in Paris with British Lord Ismay as NATO’s first Secretary General.
While political stability was gradually restored to western Europe and the post-war economic miracle began, new allies joined the alliance in 1952 with Greece and Türkiye, and in 1955 with the Federal Republic of Germany. In response, the Warsaw Pact, a collective defence treaty, was established by the Soviet Union and other Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe.
Massive retaliation
The collective defence arrangements in NATO served to place the whole of western Europe under the American “nuclear umbrella”. NATO’s first military doctrine adopted in the 1950s was a strategy of massive retaliation: if the Soviet Union attacked, NATO would respond with nuclear weapons. The alliance also took its first steps towards a political as well as a military role. The construction of the Berlin wall in 1961 sealed the division of the world into two blocs, while the Cuba missile crisis in 1962 showcased the risk of escalation between the west and the east.
France’s withdrawal and Harmel report
After French President Charles de Gaulle announced in 1966 France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command structure (while remaining in the alliance) and requested the removal of all allied headquarters from French territory, a new SHAPE Headquarters was established in Casteau near Mons, Belgium in March 1967, and NATO HQ moved to Brussels in October of the same year. In the wake of these events, the so-called Harmel report was adopted by the North Atlantic Council in December 1967, establishing a substantial work programme seeking a more stable relationship with the east and containing proposals for disarmament and practical arms control measures. The same year, NATO adopted the revised strategic concept of flexible response, based on a balanced range of responses involving the use of conventional as well as nuclear weapons, to replace the massive retaliation doctrine.
Crisis…
After a decade of detente between the two blocs, relations cooled again with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the Soviet deployment of SS-20 ballistic missiles in Europe. The NATO “dual track” decision to deploy nuclear-capable Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in western Europe while continuing negotiations with the Soviets led to internal discord between NATO members when deployment began in 1983.
…and political change
Things changed with the ascent in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader, initiating his policy of opening (Perestroika/Glasnost). The US and the USSR signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, eliminating all nuclear and ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges. The 1980s also saw the accession of NATO’s first new member since 1955 as Spain joined the Transatlantic Alliance.
End of the cold war – the hope for peace
With the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union two years later, the world entered a new era with the hope of peace, democracy and prosperity. In November 1991 NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept and in December 1991 the allies established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, renamed the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997. This forum brought them together with their central and eastern European, and central Asian neighbours for joint consultations. But the hope for long-lasting stability and peace vanished, since the collapse of Communism had also given way to the rise of nationalism and ethnic violence, as it was illustrated by the deadly civil war in the former Yugoslavia in which NATO decided to intervene after wide hesitations in 1995.
New structures and members
Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became members of NATO. At the May 2002 summit in Rome, the NATO-Russia Council was established and at the summit in Prague in 2002, important changes in NATO’s structure were decided, with the Allied Command Operations (ACO) headquartered at SHAPE, Belgium, in charge of operational planning, command and control of NATO operations and the Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk, US, aimed at adapting NATO to evolving new threats, new technologies, as well as the integration of new member countries. NATO enlargement would continue during the following years, with Finland joining in early 2023 as the 31st member state.
Against the background of Russia’s aggression of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO leaders approved a new Strategic Concept at their summit in Madrid (June 2022), describing the security environment facing the alliance and setting out NATO’s three core tasks of deterrence and defence; crisis prevention and management; and cooperative security.
