The once settled question of whether and how America should provide military support for democratically elected governments in western Europe is highlighted in today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued in 1952 celebrating NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
The treaty establishing NATO, which was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere, was ratified by the U.S. Senate on July 21, 1949. While the measure had strong bipartisan support, it was hotly debated and ultimately opposed by 11 conservative isolationist Republicans and two left-leaning Democrats who feared it would provoke military confrontation with the USSR.
But 82 Senators voted in favor of NATO, which emerged out of the rising tensions between the Soviet Union and the US in 1947 and 1948. These included an ongoing civil war in Greece, along with tensions in Turkey, a Soviet-sponsored coup in Czechoslovakia that resulted in a communist government coming to power, and gains by the Communist Party in Italian elections. There also were heated disagreements over the postwar status of still occupied Germany.
In March 1948, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty, which treaty provided collective defense; if any one of these nations was attacked, the others were bound to help defend it. Not long afterwards, President Harry Truman told a special joint session of Congress that he was “sure that the determination of the free countries of Europe to protect themselves will be matched by an equal determination on our part to help them protect themselves.”
The Truman Administration instituted a peacetime draft, increased military spending, and called upon the historically isolationist Republican Congress to consider a military alliance with Europe. These efforts were greatly aided by Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), a one-time isolationist who had become convinced during World War II that it was important for the US to present a unified internationalist front.
On June 11, 1948 the Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution offered by Vandenberg stating that the United States should support “the progressive development of regional and other collective self-defense in accordance with the purposes, principles, and provisions of the [United Nations] Charter….” Almost immediately thereafter, the Soviet Union blocked all ground travel to the portions of Berlin occupied by American, British, and French troops. The U.S. and its allies not only responded with a massive airlift of food and other necessities but also stepped up what had begun as secret negotiations with Great Britain and Canada on a mutual defense treaty. These expanded to include countries in western Europe and resulted in the treaty establishing NATO, which was signed on April 4, 1949, by representatives of 12 countries: the U.S., Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal.
The treaty was a carefully crafted compromise between the European desire for explicit U.S. commitments to provide military assistance to prospective NATO allies and the American desire—strongly expressed in Congress—for more general, less specific assistance provisions. A key provision (Article V) stated that “an armed attack against one or more of [NATO’s members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and that NATO countries would respond, individually and collective, with whatever the deemed necessary “including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
The Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved the measure in early June and in early July the full Senate took it up. Although it had strong bipartisan support, it was opposed by several Senators, most notably Senator Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), the Senate’s leading conservative who was known as “Mr. Republican.” Taft, who was troubled by Article V and the prospect that passage of NATO would be followed a bill providing substantial military aid to NATO members, claimed that NATO was “not a peace program; it is a war program.”
Following lengthy and detailed debate which concluded on July 21, the Senate considered – and overwhelmingly rejected proposed limitations on the treaty, such as stipulating that it didn’t commit the US to supplying arms; that unless authorized by a Joint Resolution and that it did not obligate the Congress to declare war or authorize employment of U.S. military forces. The Senate then voted overwhelmingly to approve the treaty.
Over the next few years, Greece, Turkey, and West Germany joined NATO. The Soviet Union condemned NATO as a warmongering alliance and in 1955 established the Warsaw Pact (a military alliance between the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellites). After the Iron Curtain fell in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many former Soviet bloc countries joined NATO which now has 30 members (with three others, including the Ukraine, aspiring to join in, a goal strongly opposed by Russia).
While there have been disputes, until 2017 there was little doubt about the US government’s commitment to NATO’s underlying principles. However, President Trump has taken aim at NATO, particularly questioning (as did its few opponents in 1949) its basic premises of mutual aid and financial support. In considering the wisdom of Trump’s attacks on NATO, it’s worth remembering what President Truman said when he officially asked the Senate to ratify the NATO treaty. “Events in this century have taught us that we cannot achieve peace independently,” he said. “The world has grown too small. The oceans to our east and west no longer protect us from the reach of brutality and aggression.
We have also learned- learned in blood and conflict – that if we are to achieve peace we must work for peace. This knowledge has made us determined to do everything we can to insure that peace is maintained. We have not arrived at this decision lightly or without recognition of the effort it entails. But we cannot escape the great responsibility that goes with our stature in the world.” That’s where the buck stopped then. And it’s probably where it should stop today.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and, as Truman said, work for peace.