N.A.T.O. 1948: The Birth of the Transatlantic Alliance: The Birth of the Transatlantic Alliance

by Lawrence S. Kaplan

This compelling history brings to life the watershed year of 1948, when the United States reversed its long-standing position of political and military isolation from Europe and agreed to an "entangling alliance" with ten European nations. Not since 1800, when the United States ended its alliance with France, had the nation made such a commitment. The historic North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949, but the often-contentious negotiations stretched throughout the preceding year.

Lawrence S. Kaplan, the leading historian of NATO, traces the tortuous and dramatic process, which struggled to reconcile the conflicting concerns on the part of the future partners. Although the allies could agree on the need to cope with the threat of Soviet-led Communism and on the vital importance of an American association with a unified Europe, they differed over the means of achieving these ends. The United States had to contend with domestic isolationist suspicions of Old World intentions, the military's worries about over extension of the nation's resources, and the apparent incompatibility of the projected treaty with the UN charter. For their part, Europeans had to be convinced that American demands to abandon their traditions would provide the sense of security that economic and political recovery from World War II required.

Kaplan brings to life the colorful diplomats and politicians arrayed on both sides of the debate. The end result was a remarkably durable treaty and alliance that has linked the fortunes of America and Europe for over fifty years. Despite differences that have persisted and occasionally flared over the past fifty years, NATO continues to bind America and Europe in the twenty-first century. Kaplan's detailed and lively account draws on a wealth of primary sources—newspapers, memoirs, and diplomatic documents—to illuminate how the United States came to assume international obligations it had scrupulously avoided for the previous 150 years.

Genres: Politics

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization rose from the ashes of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. The shattering toll on human life the war took forced Europe to eliminate the obstacles to economic integration and inspired the United States, the war's primary victor in terms of economy, to abandon its customary isolation from European political and military affairs. The fear of aggressive Moscow-led world-Communism movement accelerated these fundamental changes.
Before those changes could become a reality, however, many impediments had to be overcome. For the containment of the Soviet Union, Europe needed a revived Germany, but Western countries, France prominent among them, could still conjure up much too clear images of the Nazi atrocities and were worried about what another strong German state would mean for their security.

As Kaplan reveals, despite the charges that NATO was a product of America's imperial ambitions after WWII, it were, in fact, Western Europeans, led by Ernest Bevin (Foreign Minister of Britain) and George Bidalt (Foreign Minister of France), who wanted U.S involvement in their collaboration for a future defense organization; their economies could not be rebuilt without American help, and their security would be endangered without an American engagement in counterbalancing the USSR. However, joining a new western alliance against the Soviets was not a proposal the Truman Administration could accept at the time; for Americans, the isolationist tradition had not yet been breached, and the public was too suspicious of European intentions. Nevertheless, there was a way to involve America in European affairs – the Marshall Plan of 1947, which acknowledged that only American aid could revive Western economies, whose collapse, according to a CIA report, would pose "the greatest danger to the security of the United States . . ."
On one hand, the Marshall Plan was a huge success. The twelve-billion-dollar program not only boosted European recovery, but also speeded up European integration. Europeans recognized the opportunity the Plan offered them and worked to meet it. With Bevin and Bidalt leading the way, European countries sought to show that they could overcome economic barriers and unite.
On the other hand, it immediately became obvious that the Plan deepened the East-West split. The Soviets had been invited to join the European Recovery Program, but their delegates to Paris saw the dangers it posed to their control of Eastern Europe. Actually, by purposefully conditioning participation on principles Stalin could not accept because they would mean the revival of Germany and the opening of Eastern Europe to trade, George Marshall and the rest of the US policymakers were able to guarantee that the Soviets would not be able to sabotage the initiative.
In any case, the fact that the USSR withdrew from discussions and forced Belorussia and Ukraine to follow suit made it clear that the Marshall Plan hastened the Cold War. Bevin and Bidalt believed that in addition to the economic and political support, America has to offer military one.
On December 23, 1948, when US officials seemed to be in a receptive mood, France and Britain presented their plan for a Western military alliance.
American reactions to a potential new relations with Europe were generally favorable, but it still ranges from enthusiastic to cautious in the case of George Marshall. From the perspective of the States, after all, the main priority of the Administration still was to not provide military aid, nothing to say of entangling the country into a European alliance. The Administration expected Europe to make its first self-recovery steps before engaging with the USA; only after Americans knew exactly what the Europeans countries prepared to do for themselves would America take action.

In these circumstances, the idea of a transatlantic commitment might have remained only an idea; the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Belgium felt that they were treated as insignificant by Britain and France, while the French remained anxious about the possibility of another appeasement of Germany. These unfavorable developments in inter-European relations dismayed the US State Department. American involvement in European affairs was restored less by diplomacy than by a series of repressive Soviet acts, the Berlin Blockade and the Prague coup of February 1948 among them. The coup not only overthrew Czechoslovakia's democratic government, but also caused the suicide of its foreign minister, Jan Masaryk. The Communist presence in the Mediterranean was definitely sobering for the United States, but the fate of Czechoslovakia was the decisive factor. It finally compelled America to entangle itself into an alliance of the sort Bevin and Bidalt wanted from her.
Yet, what role exactly would the United States play in uniting Western Europe was unclear. Eventually, in a series of secret meetings held in the Pentagon in the last week of March, US participation in a regional defense organization based on Articles 51 and 52 of the UN Charter was proposed. Care was taken to make the proposal consistent with the charter, allowing individual and regional defense that would not invoke a Soviet veto. To ensure congressional support, a requirement that Western European members also pool their military resources was included to underscore their contribution to their defense effort.
Nevertheless, obstacles to the signing of a transatlantic treaty remained, the judgement of the US Senate, whose approval of aid to Europe did not extend to alliances, chief among them. If there was one figure responsible for the eventual American commitment to Europe, then, it was Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A former isolationist Republican, he had converted to internationalism during the Second World War and proved to be instrumental in bringing his party into a European alliance. His support, though, came with a condition – the acceptance of the superiority of the United Nations as indispensable to the new relationship.
The end product of long discussions in April 1948 was the Vandenberg Resolution, affirming that the US association with regional arrangements for collective and individual defense would not bypass Congress or the UN if war broke out in Europe. According to Kaplan, the Resolution gave scope to the movement toward an entangling alliance.

The future allies met in Washington from July to September 1948. These probing talks, which followed America's acceptance of a military alliance with the Brussel Pact countries, gave birth to NATO. All agreed on the need of a US leadership in the fledgeling organization, as well as on continued development of European integration, on opposition to Soviet expansion, and on France's request for a cautious approach to German recovery. Their disagreements focused on the order of recipients of US military assistance, France demanding to be at the head of the line, and on the number of members. Although there was no expectation that the Washington negotiations would be definitive and the North Atlantic Treaty would not become a reality until six months later, its substance was established by September 1948.
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949. The organization can be credited with the accession of West Germany in 1955, which ended 300 years of Franco-German wars, and with the advancement of European political integration through its support of the European Union.

Lawrence S. Kaplan has written a very well-researched study, which I recommend to anyone interested in post-World-War-II European recovery.