History and Activities of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (or as they say in French le Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), began as a military alliance of governments due to the North Atlantic Treaty ( 4 April 1949). From its inception NATO, with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, has focused on a structure cooperative defence. It translates this structure as having the member states responding to a joint and mutual defence against attack by a non- NATO aggressor. From the original 12 member states there are now 28 participants in this organization dedicated to keeping the alliance strong and vital in a changing world order.

Initially, NATO began as a political body, more prone to discussion rather than action. This changed when the Korean War spurred the member states into action and they set up a military command structure under the leadership of two U.S. supreme commanders to effectively deal with the situation that was brewing in Korea. As the first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated the organization’s goal was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.[4] The alliances of WWII with the Russians had taken a beating as the battles became ideological with communism on one side and democracy as represented by the west and NATO was on the other. As for the Germans, there was a basic distrust since they had been responsible for both world wars and it was only four years after their surrender that NATO was formed. Eventually Germany became and is a vital and full-fledged member of the organization.

The alliance had some initial credibility issues, since the ever changing relationships between European members and the US were in flux (as always). There was a significant feat that NATO would be unable to stand together against a Soviet invasion. As a sign of its coolness towards the alliance, and basically as a vote of no confidence, the French developed their own nuclear arsenal and withdrew from NATO’s military structure in 1966 and hasn’t rejoined that aspect of NATO since. In 1955, in retaliation to NATO, the Soviet Bloc countries started their own alliance The Warsaw Pact, and thereby created a common antipathy towards each alliance.

In 1989, precipitated by the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany, NATO focused its attention on the turmoil of the Balkan states and the troubles brewing in that region. At the same time NATO forged stronger and more durable associations with their former Warsaw Pact adversaries and succeeded so well that quite a few of these states joined the alliance between 1999 and 2004. On 1 April 2009, the NATO membership grew it its present 28 states with the entrance of Albania and Croatia into the alliance.[5] Due to the 11 September, 2001 attacks against New York and Washington, NATO has refocused its mission to fight terrorism, instead of the Eastern block and re purposed itself to meet new and more difficult confrontations in other regions of the world. The alliance has provided troops to Afghanistan as well as trainers to Iraq in order to fulfill its treaty obligations to a member state, in this case the United States, that has been attacked.