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Image:NATO-2002-Summit.jpg NATO 2002 Summit in Prague.
HistoryBeginningsImage:NATO vs Warsaw (1949-1990).png Borders of NATO (blue) and Warsaw Pact (red) states. The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. This treaty established a military alliance, later to become the Western European Union. However, American participation was thought necessary in order to counter the military power of the Soviet Union, and therefore talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately. These talks resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty, created by Lester B. Pearson, which was signed in Washington, DC on 4 April 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states, as well as the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Three years later, on 18 February 1952, Greece and Turkey also joined. Because of geography, Australia and New Zealand missed out on membership. In place of this, the ANZUS agreement was made by the United States with these nations. In 1954 the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe. The NATO countries rejected this, seeing it as an attempt to subvert NATO from within.
Early Cold War
The unity of NATO was breached early on in its history, with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onward. De Gaulle protested the United States' hegemonic role in the organisation and protested what he perceived as a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum he sent on 17 September 1958 to President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France. Considering the response he was given to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle started pursuing an independent defence for his country. France withdrew its Mediterranean fleet from NATO command on March 11 1959, and pursued an independent nuclear program, theorizing the "Force de frappe" (Striking Force) meant for deterrence. In June 1959, de Gaulle banned the stationing of foreign nuclear weapons on French soil, which caused the United States to transfer 200 military aircraft out of France. Henceforth, the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing stationed in Toul-Rosières Air Base was relocated to Ramstein AB in Germany and the base returned to French control in 1967. Between 1950 and 1967, the US Air Force operated ten major bases in France. On February 13, 1960, France tested its first nuclear bomb, Gerboise Bleue. Though France showed solidarity with the rest of NATO during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, de Gaulle continued his pursuit of an independent defence by also removing the Atlantic and Channel fleets of France from NATO command. In 1966 all French armed forces were removed from NATO’s integrated military command and all non-French NATO troops were asked to leave France. But the country remained in the political alliance. This withdrawal precipitated the relocation of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) from Paris to Casteau, north of Mons, Belgium, by 16 October 1967. France rejoined NATO's military command in 1993. The creation of NATO had as consequences the necessity for standardisation of military technology and unified strategy, through Command, Control and Communications centers (aka C4ISTAR). The STANAG (Standardisation Agreement) insured such coherence. Hence, the 7.62×51 NATO rifle cartridge was introduced in the 1950s as a standard firearm cartridge among NATO countries. Fabrique Nationale's FAL became the most popular 7.62 NATO rifle in Europe and served into the early 1980s. Also, aircraft marshaling signals were standardized, so that any NATO aircraft could land at any NATO base. Détente
During most of the duration of the Cold War, NATO maintained a holding pattern with no actual military engagement as an organisation. On 1 July 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature: NATO argued that its nuclear weapons sharing arrangements did not breach the treaty as US forces controlled the weapons until a decision was made to go to war, at which point the treaty would no longer be controlling. Few states knew of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangements at that time, and they were not challenged. On 30 May 1978, NATO countries officially defined two complementary aims of the Alliance, to maintain security and pursue détente. This was supposed to mean matching defences at the level rendered necessary by the Warsaw Pact's offensive capabilities without spurring a further arms race. However, on 12 December 1979, in light of a build-up of Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities in Europe, ministers approved the deployment of US Cruise and Pershing II theatre nuclear weapons in Europe. The new warheads were also meant to strengthen the western negotiating position in regard to nuclear disarmament. This policy was called the Dual Track policy. Similarly, in 1983–84, responding to the stationing of Warsaw Pact SS-20 medium-range missiles in Europe, NATO deployed modern Pershing II missiles able to reach Moscow within minutes. This action led to peace movement protests throughout Western Europe. The membership of the organisation in this time period likewise remained largely static, with NATO only gaining one new member in 30 May 1982, when newly democratic Spain joined the alliance, following a referendum. Greece also in 1974 withdrew its forces from NATO’s military command structure, as a result of Greco-Turkish tensions following the 1974 Cyprus dispute; Greek forces were however readmitted in 1980, with Turkish cooperation. In November 1983, a NATO maneuver code-named Able Archer 83, which simulated a NATO nuclear release, caused panic in the Kremlin. Soviet leadership, led by ailing General Secretary Yuri Andropov became concerned that US President Ronald Reagan may have been intending to launch a genuine first strike. In response, Soviet nuclear forces were readied and air units in Eastern Germany and Poland were placed on alert. Though at the time written off by US intelligence as a propaganda effort, many historians now believe Soviet fear of a NATO first strike was genuine. Cold War stay behind armiesNATO was founded early in the Cold War with the express aim of defending western Europe against a military invasion by the Soviet Union. On 24 October 1990, Italian Prime minister Giulio Andreotti (member of the Christian Democracy, DC) publicly revealed the existence of Gladio, a clandestine paramilitary militia, known as "stay-behind armies", which had as official aim to carry on guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in case of a successful Warsaw Pact invasion. Andreotti told the Italian Parliament that NATO had long held a covert policy of training partisans in the event of a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe.[5][6][7] Spurred by the difficulties in setting up partisan organisation in occupied Europe during the Second World War, the CIA, British MI6 and NATO trained and armed partisan groups in NATO states to fight a guerrilla war if they were conquered in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion. Operating in all of NATO and even in neutral countries (Austria, Finland - see also Operation Stella Polaris -, Sweden[8] or Switzerland, one of the three states who had a parliamentary inquiry in the matter) or in Spain before its 1982 adhesion to NATO, Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948.[9] After the 1949 creation of NATO, the CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official retreat from NATO in 1966 — which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements. According to historian Daniele Ganser, one of the major researcher on the field, "Next to the CPC, a second secret army command center, labeled Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), was set up in 1957 on the orders of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). This military structure provided for significant US leverage over the secret stay-behind networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO's history, has traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and is based in NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. The ACC's duties included elaborating on the directives of the network, developing its clandestine capability, and organizing bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE. According to former CIA director William Colby, it was 'a major program'."[9] The existence of Gladio, one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War, is now widely recognised. Belgium, Italy and Switzerland have held parliamentary inquiries in the matter. What remains controversial is the ties between Gladio members, of whom many belonged to neo-fascist movements, and false flag terrorist attacks. A NATO spokesman denied on 5 November 1990 any knowledge or involvement with Gladio[10] and has since refused to comment.[9] The US State Department has itself admitted the existence of Gladio, but denied it has been involved in terrorism, in particular in Italy and in Greece.[11] In Italy in particular, Gladio paramilitary groups have been accused by the justice of having carried out dozens of terrorist bombings, which were officially blamed on leftist groups such as the Red Brigades. It has been alleged that these groups and the individuals in them were responsible for the strategy of tension in Italy which aimed at impeding the "historic compromise" between the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) (including the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the Bologna massacre (1980))[12][13][9] political assassinations in Belgium,[14] military coups in Greece (1967) and Turkey (1980)[15] and an attempted coup in France (1961).[16] The supposed aim of this group was to prevent Communist movements in Western Europe from gaining power. Some researchers have said that the true aim was to increase the power and control of the United States over Europe.[9][17][18][9] In 2000, a report from the Italian Left Democrat party, "Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo", concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Communist Party), and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country". A report, stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence."[19][20] Post-Cold WarThe end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 removed the de facto main adversary of NATO. This caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature and tasks. In practice this ended up entailing a gradual (and still ongoing) expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, as well as the extension of its activities to areas that had not formerly been NATO concerns. The first post-Cold War expansion of NATO came with the reunification of Germany on 3 October 1990, when the former East Germany became part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance. This had been agreed in the Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet approval of a united Germany remaining in NATO, it was agreed that foreign troops and nuclear weapons would not be stationed in the east, and also that NATO would never expand further east.[21] On 28 February 1994, NATO also took its first military action, shooting down four Bosnian Serb aircraft violating a UN-mandated no-fly zone over central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Operation Deny Flight, the no-fly-zone enforcement mission, had began a year before, on 12 April 1993, and was to continue until 20 December 1995. NATO air strikes that year helped bring the war in Bosnia to an end, resulting in the Dayton Agreement. Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbours were set up, like the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. On 8 July 1997, three former communist countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, were invited to join NATO, which finally happened in 1999. On 24 March 1999, NATO saw its first broad-scale military engagement in the Kosovo War, where it waged an 11-week bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A formal declaration of war never took place. Yugoslavia referred to the Kosovo War as military aggression, as being undeclared and contravening the UN Charter.[22] The conflict ended on 11 June 1999, when Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milošević agreed to NATO’s demands by accepting UN resolution 1244. NATO then helped establish the KFOR, a NATO-led force under a United Nations mandate that operated the military mission in Kosovo. Debate concerning NATO's role and the concerns of the wider international community continued throughout its expanded military activities: The United States opposed efforts to require the UN Security Council to approve NATO military strikes, such as the ongoing action against Yugoslavia, while France and other NATO countries claimed the alliance needed UN approval. American officials said that this would undermine the authority of the alliance, and they noted that Russia and China would have exercised their Security Council vetoes to block the strike on Yugoslavia. In April 1999, at the Washington summit, a German proposal that NATO adopt a no-first-use nuclear strategy was rejected. After the September 11 attacksThe expansion of the activities and geographical reach of NATO grew even further as an outcome of the September 11 attacks. These caused as a response the provisional invocation (on September 12) of the collective security of NATO's charter — Article 5 which states that any attack on a member state will be considered an attack against the entire group of members. The invocation was confirmed on 4 October 2001 when NATO determined that the attacks were indeed eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty.[23] The eight official actions taken by NATO in response to the attacks included the first two examples of military action taken in response to an invocation of Article 5: Operation Eagle Assist and Operation Active Endeavour. Despite this early show of solidarity, NATO faced a crisis little more than a year later, when on 10 February 2003, France and Belgium vetoed the procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. Germany did not use its right to break the procedure but said it supported the veto. On the issue of Afghanistan on the other hand, the alliance showed greater unity: On 16 April 2003 NATO agreed to take command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The decision came at the request of Germany and the Netherlands, the two nations leading ISAF at the time of the agreement, and all 19 NATO ambassadors approved it unanimously. The handover of control to NATO took place on 11 August, and marked the first time in NATO’s history that it took charge of a mission outside the north Atlantic area. Canada had originally been slated to take over ISAF by itself on that date. In January 2004, NATO appointed Minister Hikmet Çetin, of Turkey, as the Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) in Afghanistan. Minister Cetin is primarily responsible for advancing the political-military aspects of the Alliance in Afghanistan. On 31 July 2006, a NATO-led force, made up mostly of troops from Canada, Great Britain, Turkey and the Netherlands, took over military operations in the south of Afghanistan from a U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition. Expansion and restructuringNew NATO structures were also formed while old ones were abolished: The NATO Response Force (NRF) was launched at the 2002 Prague Summit on 21 November. On 19 June 2003, a major restructuring of the NATO military commands began as the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic were abolished and a new command, Allied Command Transformation (ACT), was established in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) became the Headquarters of Allied Command Operations (ACO). ACT is responsible for driving transformation (future capabilities) in NATO, whilst ACO is responsible for current operations. Membership went on expanding with the accession of seven more Northern European and Eastern European countries to NATO: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (see Baltic Air Policing) and also Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. They were first invited to start talks of membership during the 2002 Prague Summit, and joined NATO on 29 March 2004. A number of other countries have also expressed a wish to join the alliance, including Albania, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia and Montenegro. From the Russian point of view, NATO's eastward expansion since the end of the cold war has been in clear breach of an agreement between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H.W. Bush which allowed for a peaceful unification of Germany. NATO's expansion policy is seen as a continuation of a Cold War attempt to surround and isolate Russia.[24][25][26][27] The 2006 NATO summit was held in Riga, Latvia, which had joined the Atlantic Alliance two years earlier. It is the first NATO summit in a former COMECON country. ISAFIn August 2003, NATO commenced first mission ever outside Europe when it assumed control over International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. However, some critics feel that national caveats or other restrictions undermine the efficiency of ISAF. For instance, political scientist Joseph Nye stated in a 2006 article that "many NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan have "national caveats" that restrict how their troops may be used. While the Riga summit relaxed some of these caveats to allow assistance to allies in dire circumstances, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and the US are doing most of the fighting in southern Afghanistan, while French, German, and Italian troops are deployed in the quieter north. It is difficult to see how NATO can succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan unless it is willing to commit more troops and give commanders more flexibility."[28] If these caveats were to be eliminated, it is argued that this could help NATO to succeed. MembershipCurrent membersImage:Map of NATO countries.png Map of NATO countries. Image:NATO expansion.png Membership of NATO in Europe. Future membershipArticle X of the North Atlantic Treaty makes it possible that non-member states join NATO:[29]
Note that this article poses two general limits to non-member states: (1) only European states are eligible for membership and (2) these states need the approval of all the existing member states. The second criterion means that every member state can put some criteria forward that have to be attained. In practice, NATO formulates in most cases a common set of criteria, but for instance in the case of Cyprus, Turkey blocks Cyprus' wish to be able to apply for membership as long as the Cyprus dispute is not resolved. Membership Action Plan
As a procedure for nations wishing to join NATO, a mechanism called Membership Action Plan (MAP) was approved in the Washington Summit of 1999. A country's participation in MAP entails the annual presentation of reports concerning its progress on five different measures:
NATO provides feedback as well as technical advice to each country and evaluates its progress on an individual basis.[30] NATO is also unlikely to invite countries such as the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland, where popular opinion and the elected governments do not support NATO membership. NATO officially recognises the policy of neutrality practised in these countries, and does not consider the failure to set a goal for NATO membership as a sign of distrust. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
