IB History Establishment and Role of NATO Notes

Establishment and Role of NATO: Western Europe’s Security System

Why Western Europe wanted a new security alliance

1. Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy emerged from the Second World War weakened, indebted, and unable to defend Europe alone against the USSR.
   • The Red Army remained stationed across Eastern Europe, while Western European armies demobilised and relied on American economic recovery aid.
   • European leaders feared both direct Soviet pressure and the political appeal of strong communist parties in France and Italy.
2. The interwar reliance on the League of Nations and shifting diplomatic guarantees had failed to stop aggression in the 1930s.
   • After 1945, Western governments wanted a permanent American commitment rather than another promise that might disappear after a crisis.
   • This made NATO different from a temporary coalition because it embedded military planning in a formal institution.
3. The Berlin Blockade of 1948 to 1949 convinced many Western leaders that the USSR would use pressure tactics to test Western resolve.
   • The Berlin Airlift showed that the USA could protect a Western position inside Soviet-controlled territory if European states stayed coordinated.
   • The crisis helped turn fear of Soviet power into support for a treaty-based collective defence alliance.
4. Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty in March 1948 as a regional defence pact.
   • The Brussels Treaty showed European initiative, but its members knew it lacked enough troops, money, and air power without the United States.
   • It helped persuade American policymakers that Europeans were not simply asking Washington to defend them for free. Burden sharing mattered from the start.

The North Atlantic Treaty

1. On 4 April 1949, twelve states signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington.
   • The founders were the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal.
   • The alliance linked North America to Western Europe in a way no peacetime American alliance had done before. Isolationism no longer set US policy.
2. Article 5: the treaty declared that an armed attack against one member would be treated as an attack against all members.
   • Members promised to assist the attacked state, including armed force if necessary, but each government retained control over the exact response. Sovereignty was preserved.
   • This wording made the guarantee credible enough to deter the USSR, while keeping it acceptable to the US Senate.

1. Article 2 also committed members to strengthen free institutions and economic collaboration.
   • This mattered because NATO was not only a military pact. It also tied Western identity to democracy, capitalism, and Atlantic cooperation.
   • The alliance helped define the Cold War border between Western liberal democracies and Soviet-backed one-party systems. Ideology sat beside strategy.
2. Lord Ismay’s formula: NATO’s first secretary general later summarised its purpose as keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
   • Keeping the Russians out meant deterring Soviet expansion beyond Eastern Europe.
   • Keeping the Americans in meant preventing a US withdrawal from Europe after recovery began.
   • Keeping the Germans down meant controlling German rearmament through multilateral institutions rather than leaving Germany fully independent.

How NATO developed as a military organisation

1. The Korean War made Western governments fear that a regional communist attack in Asia might be followed by one in Europe.
   • NATO responded by creating a permanent military command structure and appointing Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
   • The headquarters system turned the alliance from a treaty promise into an organised defence machine. SHAPE coordinated planning and command.
2. The United States supplied the nuclear umbrella, much of the alliance's air power, and a large part of its command capacity.
   • Western European states accepted American dominance because it made deterrence credible against Soviet conventional forces. Security dependence was the price of protection.
   • This dependence also created resentment, especially when Washington expected allies to support wider US Cold War strategy. Alliance politics never disappeared.
3. The Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO in 1955 after the Paris Agreements.
   • German rearmament strengthened NATO’s defence of Central Europe, but it also alarmed the USSR and East Germany.
   • The Soviet response was the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which formalised the military division of Europe into rival alliance systems.
4. Forward defence: NATO planned to defend Western Europe as far east as possible, especially along the inner German border.
   • This strategy made West Germany the central battlefield in any European war, which tied German security closely to alliance credibility.
   • It also meant NATO’s role was defensive in language but heavily armed in practice. Deterrence required visible preparation for war.

Nuclear strategy and alliance tension

1. Massive retaliation: in the 1950s, NATO relied on the threat of American nuclear retaliation to compensate for weaker conventional forces.
   • The strategy warned Moscow that even a limited conventional attack could trigger nuclear escalation. Deterrence by fear was cheaper than matching every Soviet tank.
   • European allies worried that the USA might not risk New York or Chicago to defend Hamburg, Milan, or Rotterdam.
2. In 1967 NATO adopted flexible response, a doctrine that offered graduated options: conventional defence, tactical nuclear use, then strategic nuclear exchange.
   • The new strategy aimed to make deterrence more credible by avoiding an immediate leap to all-out nuclear war. Escalation control became central.
   • But flexible response also required more conventional spending by European allies, which sharpened burden-sharing arguments. Money became part of strategy.
3. Nuclear sharing: the USA placed nuclear weapons in Europe while retaining final control over their use.
   • This reassured allies that the American guarantee was physically present on European soil. US forces made the guarantee hard to separate from Europe’s fate.
   • It also raised democratic questions because populations lived near weapons that could make their own countries nuclear targets. Public consent became harder in the 1980s.
4. NATO's 1979 Dual-Track Decision offered arms-control talks while preparing to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles if talks failed.
   • The decision answered Soviet SS-20 deployments, which threatened Western Europe with intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
   • By 1983, mass protests in West Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and Belgium showed that NATO’s military role could divide Western societies.

NATO and Western European politics

1. NATO reassured smaller Western and Northern European states that they did not have to bargain alone with the Soviet Union.
   • Countries such as Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands gained security through collective planning.
   • This reduced incentives for neutralism or separate deals with Moscow, even when publics criticised US policy. Alliance discipline shaped diplomacy.
2. NATO worked alongside the Marshall Plan and European integration by creating a secure setting for Western recovery.
   • Security made investment and reconstruction easier because governments believed the USA would remain engaged in Europe. Confidence was a strategic resource.
   • But defence spending competed with welfare spending, especially as European states built post-war social services. Guns and welfare became a recurring political tension.
3. Communist parties, peace movements, and neutralist groups challenged NATO in several Western states.
   • In Italy and France, communist parties criticised NATO as an American-led bloc and linked anti-NATO politics to domestic class conflict.
   • In West Germany, fear of becoming the battlefield of a superpower war made NATO membership both reassuring and frightening.
4. Norway and Denmark joined NATO but restricted foreign bases or nuclear weapons in peacetime to reduce Soviet alarm.
   • These limits showed that NATO membership did not erase national choices. Small states shaped their alliance role around geography and domestic politics.
   • The Nordic pattern helped keep the northern flank inside NATO without turning it into an obvious forward nuclear zone. Restraint was part of deterrence.

France, autonomy, and the limits of unity

1. President Charles de Gaulle believed NATO gave the United States too much power over European security.
   • France developed its own nuclear force, the force de frappe, to avoid total dependence on Washington.
   • De Gaulle wanted Europe, and especially France, to act as an independent centre of power between the superpowers. National grandeur drove policy.
2. In 1966, France left NATO's integrated military command but remained a political member of the alliance.
   • NATO headquarters moved from Paris to Brussels, and foreign NATO forces had to leave French territory.
   • The decision exposed the difference between accepting collective defence and accepting American command dominance. Alliance unity had limits.
3. NATO responded to internal strain with the 1967 Harmel Report, defining a dual role: defence against Soviet pressure and dialogue with the Eastern bloc.
   • This helped NATO survive détente because the alliance could support arms control without abandoning military readiness.
   • The report showed that NATO adapted by adding political functions to military ones. Flexibility became a source of endurance.

NATO’s role by the end of the Cold War

1. NATO's core role was to make Soviet military action in Western Europe too risky to attempt.
   • Deterrence depended on visible troops, command systems, exercises, nuclear weapons, and repeated public statements of commitment. Credibility had to be performed.
   • The absence of direct NATO-Warsaw Pact war in Europe became part of NATO’s claim to success. Peace through deterrence was the alliance’s central argument.
2. NATO institutionalised American power in Europe through bases, commands, troops, planning groups, and nuclear guarantees.
   • For Western Europe, this helped prevent a security vacuum like the one many leaders associated with the 1930s.
   • For Washington, NATO gave the USA influence over European strategy and prevented allies from drifting into neutralism. Atlanticism served both sides.
3. NATO made West German rearmament acceptable by embedding it in a multilateral command system.
   • This helped reassure France, Britain, and the Benelux states that German power would return under supervision.
   • It also made West Germany a protected ally rather than a neutral buffer state, which deepened the division of Germany until 1990.
4. By the 1980s, NATO had become a symbol of Western identity as much as a military alliance.
   • It linked democracy, capitalism, social stability, and Atlantic cooperation in Western political language. The West became an institutional identity.
   • Yet NATO also provoked protest because many citizens saw the same institution as a route to nuclear danger. Security and fear coexisted.