NATO served a defensive purpose throughout much of the Cold War, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, the organization turned to stabilizing Eastern Europe and expanding its membership. Over time, NATO began to embrace a more global outlook, writing in its Strategic Concept that the alliance "is affected by, and can affect, political and security developments beyond its borders. The alliance is currently engaged in five global operations and missions: securing peace in Afghanistan, maintaining a presence in Kosovo, monitoring the Mediterranean for terrorism, combating maritime piracy off of the Horn of Africa and providing assistance to the African Union.
The organization's involvement in Afghanistan "constitutes the alliance's most significant operational commitment to date," according to the group , as it has led the region's International Security Assistance Force since Negotiations worked toward finding language that would reassure the European states but not obligate the United States to act in a way that violated its own laws. While the European nations argued for individual grants and aid, the United States wanted to make aid conditional on regional coordination.
A third issue was the question of scope. The Brussels Treaty signatories preferred that membership in the alliance be restricted to the members of that treaty plus the United States.
Together, these countries held territory that formed a bridge between the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which would facilitate military action if it became necessary. The result of these extensive negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in In this agreement, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed to consider attack against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and defense matters.
This collective defense arrangement only formally applied to attacks against the signatories that occurred in Europe or North America; it did not include conflicts in colonial territories. After the treaty was signed, a number of the signatories made requests to the United States for military aid. Soon after the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the outbreak of the Korean War led the members to move quickly to integrate and coordinate their defense forces through a centralized headquarters.
The North Korean attack on South Korea was widely viewed at the time to be an example of communist aggression directed by Moscow, so the United States bolstered its troop commitments to Europe to provide assurances against Soviet aggression on the European continent. West German entry led the Soviet Union to retaliate with its own regional alliance, which took the form of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and included the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as members.
The threat of this form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression on the continent. Although formed in response to the exigencies of the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted beyond the end of that conflict, with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states. Within a few days, U. The discussions between the Western nations concluded on April 4, , when the foreign ministers of 12 countries in North America and Western Europe gathered in Washington , D.
It was primarily a security pact, with Article 5 stating that a military attack against any of the signatories would be considered an attack against them all. When U. Secretary of State Dean Acheson put his signature on the document, it reflected an important change in American foreign policy. For the first time since the s, the U. Unhappy with its role in the organization, France opted to withdraw from military participation in NATO in and did not return until The formation of the Warsaw Pact was in some ways a response to the creation of NATO, although it did not occur until six years after the Western alliance came into being.
In the aftermath of World War I and World War II, Soviet leaders felt very apprehensive about Germany once again becoming a military power—a concern that was shared by many European nations on both sides of the Cold War divide. In the mids, however, the U. The Soviets warned that such a provocative action would force them to make new security arrangements in their own sphere of influence, and they were true to their word. This lineup remained constant until the Cold War ended with the dismantling of all the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in and Like NATO, the Warsaw Pact focused on the objective of creating a coordinated defense among its member nations in order to deter an enemy attack.
There was also an internal security component to the agreement that proved useful to the USSR.
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