POLITICS, WAR, AND THE WORLD BEYOND
Ukraine After the Washington Summit
Everything But A Formal Declaration of War
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is history's most successful military-strategic alliance. Established seventy-five years ago to implement the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, NATO is a system of collective security: its independent member states agree to defend each other against an attack by any third party.
A history lesson
At first, the official threat was from a resurgent Germany, which had recently lost the Second World War. Simultaneously, with Germany’s defeat, the Soviet Union moved to the center of attention. The Soviet Union (USSR) was occupying Eastern Europe with the largest army ever seen and showed no sign of withdrawing. If anything, as the other allies looked for ways to transition to a peacetime economy, the USSR consolidated its hold and appeared poised to move west. The 1947 Truman Doctrine settled the debate in the United States over Soviet intentions.
The United States is one of the twelve original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty. The organization's first Secretary General described its mission as “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
