Some of the information contained within may be outdated and links may not function. Please contact the DOD Webmaster with any questions. So what is NATO, and what does it do? Photo By: Regina Ali. NATO Mattis. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in per the Paris Pacts of , but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe.
The Soviets wanted to keep their part of Europe and not let the Americans take it from them. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement.
A corollary to this idea was the necessity of intervention if a country appeared to be violating core socialist ideas and Communist Party functions, which was explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Geostrategic principles also drove the Soviet Union to prevent invasion of its territory by Western European powers. The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who was attacked.
Relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence.
However, almost all governments of those member states were indirectly controlled by the Soviet Union. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, there was no direct confrontation between them. Instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis. The effect upon the Alliance was dramatic. NATO soon gained a consolidated command structure with a military Headquarters based in the Parisian suburb of Rocquencourt, near Versailles. With the benefit of aid and a security umbrella, political stability was gradually restored to Western Europe and the post-war economic miracle began.
European political integration took its first hesitant steps. Europe settled into an uneasy stand-off, symbolised by the construction of the Berlin Wall in The intended effect of this doctrine was to deter either side from risk-taking since any attack, however small, could have led to a full nuclear exchange.
The Alliance also took its first steps towards a political as well as a military role. In the s, this uneasy but stable status quo began to change. Kennedy narrowly avoided conflict in Cuba, and as American involvement in Vietnam escalated. Significantly, France remained within the Alliance and consistently emphasised its intention to stand together with its Allies in the event of hostilities.
As a reminder of this point, in August , the Soviet Union led an invasion of Czechoslovakia that put an end to a period of political liberalisation in that country known as the Prague Spring.
Like a similar invasion of Hungary in and military repression in Berlin in , Soviet actions demonstrated what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine: given the choice between short-term control of Eastern European client states and long-run political and economic reform, the Soviet Union would choose to maintain short-term control. The end of this policy would await a Soviet leader willing to choose long-run reform. US President John F.
The role of NATO had become not merely to preserve the status quo, but to help change it. The Harmel Report helped to lay the foundation for the convening of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Two years later, the Conference led to the negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act.
The Act bound its signatories — including the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact — to respect the fundamental freedom of their citizens, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. Soviet rulers internally played down these clauses within the Act, attaching more importance to the Western recognition of the Soviet role in Eastern Europe.
Eventually, however, the Soviets came to learn that they had bound themselves to powerful and potentially subversive ideas. The deployment was not scheduled to begin until In the meantime, the Allies hoped to achieve an arms control agreement that would eliminate the need for the weapons.
By the mids, most international observers believed that Soviet Communism had lost the intellectual battle with the West. Soon other democratic activists in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself would begin to demand those very rights. By this time, command economies in the Warsaw Pact were disintegrating. The Soviet Union was spending three times as much as the United States on defence with an economy that was one-third the size. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with the intention of fundamentally reforming the communist system.
When the East German regime began to collapse in , the Soviet Union did not intervene, reversing the Brezhnev Doctrine. This time, the Soviets chose long-run reform over a short-run control that was increasingly beyond their capabilities, setting in motion a train of events that led to the break-up of the Warsaw Pact. The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November seemed to proclaim a new era of open markets, democracy and peace, and Allies reacted with incredulous joy as emboldened demonstrators overthrew Eastern European Communist governments.
But there were also frightening uncertainties. Would a united Germany be neutral? What would become of nuclear weapons in former Soviet republics? Would nationalism once again curse European politics? Before the consolidation of peace and security could begin, however, one spectre haunting European politics remained to be exorcised.
Since the Franco-Prussian War, Europe had struggled to come to terms with a united Germany at its heart. The incorporation of a re-unified Germany into the Alliance put this most ancient and destructive of dilemmas to rest. In as in , NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture. This forum brought the Allies together with their Central European, Eastern European, and Central Asian neighbours for joint consultations.
Many of these newly liberated countries — or partners, as they were soon called — saw a relationship with NATO as fundamental to their own aspirations for stability, democracy, and European integration.
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