NATO'S PURSUIT OF LEGITIMACY

NATO's pursuit of legitimacy

NATO's pursuit of legitimacy

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO, is a mutual defense alliance founded on April 4, 1949. NATO's most basic principle is that its 26 member countries pledge to regard an attack on any one of the members as an attack on all members and respond accordingly. In addition to responding after an attack, NATO also provides an organizational framework for joint military training, planning, and command and control during peacetime. By fostering a high degree of military cooperation and preparedness, NATO aims to deter external threats and advance the collective security of its members.

Discussion

NATO was one of a number of supranational organizations established in Europe following World War II. Although varied in form and function, these international organizations helped facilitate Europe's postwar recovery by promoting economic and political cooperation. While the European Union and its predecessors focused mainly on economics, NATO emerged as the foremost organization related to military and security issues. As the Soviet Union tightened its control over much of Eastern Europe after 1945, the United States and its European allies began discussing ways to fend off possible Soviet advances into Western Europe. Comparatively small and still recovering from World War II, it appeared unlikely that these Western European countries, even if they joined together, could repulse an attack launched by the much larger Soviet Union (Schmidt, 2001).

As a result, NATO was established with the implicit purpose of deterring a Soviet attack by promising a direct American military response, including the possibility of nuclear retaliation. Although not specified in the actual text of the treaty, NATO was largely conceived as an American security guarantee to protect its European allies from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union responded by arranging a similar military coalition, the Warsaw Pact, with the communist-controlled governments in Eastern Europe. These competing alliances, both backed by nuclear weapons, created a rough balance of power between the NATO military alliance in the west and the Warsaw Pact countries in the east. Given the high probability that any confrontation would escalate to nuclear war, neither side had much room to maneuver. Because of this stalemate, the situation is often referred to as the Cold War, marked by heightened geopolitical rivalry but lacking direct military engagements (Kaplan, 2007).

Genesis of NATO

In 1949 , at the height of the postwar World War II in the West was viewed with concern the expansionist policy was following the Soviet Union . It was clear that the UN might not be able alone to maintain stability in the world, and that the interests of the United States leads to numerous Soviet veto. The emergence of capitalist governments in Central Europe and East by the pressure increased Soviet influence in Western Europe. Between 1947 and 1949 , a series of events, made ??more dramatic by the recent progress of U.S. and Canadian troops were still in Europe since the end of World War II marked the highest point in the tension was ...