NATO
1949
NATO
North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization
Partly to counter Soviet
influence after World
War II, Western leaders
encouraged regional
economic and political
cooperation.
12 Original members~1949
US
Canada
Iceland
Norway
Denmark
The Netherlands
Belgium
Luxemburg
Great Britain
France
Portugal
Italy
Later (1952)
Greece and
Turkey also
joined NATO
1955
(West)
Germany
joined NATO
1982
Spain also
joined NATO
All of the countries
agreed to come to
each other’s aid if
attacked.
An attack on one is
an attack on all.
The alliance’s goal was
the eventual
integration of the
national armed forces
of the member nations
into a unified military
command.
In reality, NATO
was dominated
by the American
military
establishment.
A US general
(beginning with
Eisenhower)
was always the
supreme
commander.
NATO was the
first peacetime
alliance joined
by the United
States.
On April 4, 1949, President Truman
and diplomats from the US and
11 other countries signed the
North Atlantic Treaty
Organization pact.
1955The Warsaw
Pact
In 1955 , the USSR
with its own fears of a
rearmed Germany
created a competing
military alliance
system, the Warsaw
Pact.
It integrated the
armed forces of
Eastern Europe
into a unified
command under
the USSR
In addition, the
USSR recognized
East Germany as
an independent
state.
Thus, by 1955, Germany
had become two
separate nations, each
integrated into the
sphere on influence of a
superpower.
It was formally called the Treaty
of Friendship, Co-operation and
Mutual Assistance. The treaty
was signed in Warsaw, Poland
on May 14, 1955.
It was established
to counter the
alleged threat
from the NATO
alliance.
The creation of the Warsaw
Pact was prompted by the
integration of a "remilitarized" West Germany
into NATO on May 9,
1955.
Members of the Warsaw Pact:
Soviet Union
Poland
East Germany
Czechoslovakia
Bulgaria
Hungary
Romania
Albania
The communist
states of Central
and Eastern Europe
were signatories
except Yugoslavia.
The members of the
Warsaw Pact pledged
to defend each other
if one or more of the
members were
attacked.
The treaty also stated that
relations among the
signatories were based
on mutual
noninterference in internal
affairs and respect for
national sovereignty and
independence.
The noninterference rule
would later be violated
with the Soviet
interventions in Hungary
(Hungarian Revolution1956) and
Czechoslavakia (Prague
Spring, 1968).
In both cases the
intervening forces
claimed to have been
invited, and thus the
rules were not
considered formally
violated.
Albania stopped supporting
the alliance in 1961 as a
result of the Sino-Soviet spit
in which the hard-line
Stalinist government in
Albania sided with China,
and officially withdrew from
the pact in 1968.