4 April 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Is Formed

On 4 April 1949, the United States and eleven other nations - designated as such in the above map - establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),

a mutual-defense pact headquartered in Brussels, Belgium that aimed at containing possible Soviet aggression against Western Europe.

The original twelve members of NATO in 1949 are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium,Netherlands, and Luxembourg. 

NATO stood as the main United States-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War.

Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate rapidly in 1948.

There were heated disagreements over the post-World War II status of Germany, with the Americans insisting on German recovery and eventual rearmament, and the Soviets steadfastly opposing such actions.

In June of 1948, the Soviets blocked all ground travel to the American occupation zone in West Berlin,

and only a massive United States airlift of food and other necessities sustained the population of the zone until the Soviets relented and lifted the blockade in May of 1949.

Please see my detailed LinkedIn article that discusses the Berlin Airlift.

In January of 1949, President Harry S. Truman warned in his State of the Union Address that the forces of democracy and communism were locked in a dangerous struggle,

and he called for a defensive alliance of nations in the North Atlantic and for United States military in Korea. NATO was the result.

In April of 1949, representatives from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal

joined the United States in signing the NATO agreement.

The signatories agreed:

“An armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all.”

President Truman welcomed the organization as “a shield against aggression.”

Not all Americans embraced NATO. Isolationists such as Senator Robert A. Taft declared that NATO was

“not a peace program; it is a war program.”

Most, however, saw the organization as a necessary response to the ever-increasing communist threat.

The United States Senate ratified the treaty by a wide margin in June of 1949.

During the next few years, Greece, Turkey, and West Germany also joined NATO.

The Soviet Union condemned NATO as a warmongering alliance,

even though the Soviet Union requested membership in NATO in 1954

and, upon being rejected for same, responded by setting up the Warsaw Pact -- a military alliance between the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellites -- in 1955.

NATO lasted throughout the course of the Cold War,

and continues to play an important role in post-Cold War Europe.

In recent years, for example, NATO forces were active in trying to bring an end to civil war in Bosnia

and other similar clashes.

I have worked on several NATO projects over the decades, and have had the pleasure of visiting some of the western European countries as a result. They are all crammed into that land mass and have hostile neighbors to the east. They took NATO very seriously, and after having a look-see of my own, I concur.

Long live NATO!

SOURCES: www.wikipedia.com ; www.britannica.com ; www.encyclopedia.com ; www.cfr.org ; www.nato.int ; www.armradio.am ; www.nato.mfa.am ; www.peacekeeping.un.org ; www.brookings.edu ; www.quora.com ; www.voanews.com ; www.providingforpeacekeeping.org ; www.reuters.com ; www.cnn.com ; www.huffingtonpost.com ; www.theguardian.com ; www.history.com ; www.bbc.com ; www.peaceoperationsreview.org ; www.rand.org ; www.hrw.org ; www.youtube.com ; www.pinterest.com ; www.alamy.com ; www.gettyimages.com ; www.google.com ; www.bing.com