The Truth About NATO Pt. 1
Did NATO Expansion Cause The Ukraine War?
Russian President Putin talks about a multitude of reasons why he started the Ukraine war. From Ukraine not being a real country to them being Nazis, we’ll leave those alone for now. Putin also talks about NATO expansion being the reason, I want to dive into the history of NATO to see if what he said has merit.
What is NATO?
If you’re familiar with my writing you already know how this goes. If we’re going to talk about something we first have to define it. NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is mainly known a defensive military alliance bound by a treaty that states: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently”.
But that’s not the only thing in the treaty, it consists of many articles, for example Article 1:
“The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
We’re not going to go through every article but NATO is not just a military alliance it’s many things, including a promise of peacefully negotiating through your problems. NATO currently consists of 32 countries.
Source: The North Atlantic Treaty 1949
Foundation & Expansion
NATO was founded after WWII in 1949 as a way to keep the peace in Europe and to help deter invasions from the Soviet Union. The Europeans were having issues with the United Nations not being able to help with their security concerns. By late 1947, the Soviets had cast 17 of the 18 vetoes issued in the UN Security Council and in 1948 backed a coup in Czechoslovakia.
Source: State Department Press Release, Transcript of Broadcast, March 18, 1949
The first members of NATO in 1949 were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1952, Turkey and Greece joined NATO, Turkey joined because the Soviets didn’t renew their non-aggression pacts and started making demands.
“Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality (Non-Aggression) Pact in 1925 would not be extended on 19 March 1945 and in contradiction with the 1921 Treaty of Moscow, requested the provinces of Kars and Ardahan. Turkey responded to these demands of the Soviets by his own efforts. When the possibility of war was determined, Turkey got close to the western-block led by United States.”
Source: The Breakdown of Turkish-Soviet Relations
As for Greece they had a civil war against a communist uprising and their leaders were very anti-communist. Due to western support and an agreement Britain had with the Soviets the uprising lacked foreign support and it ultimately failed. Because they bordered communist countries like Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, they didn’t think they would be so lucky next time so they joined NATO.
The next to join was West Germany in 1955, they were the front line of the cold war. The US, Britain, and France occupied West Germany and West Berlin and the Soviets occupied the east, and between the two sides was the Berlin wall. Due to the past two world wars, no one wanted Germany to independently re-arm so the solution to that was to integrate them into NATO.
The challenge facing Eisenhower was enormous. During his initial tour, Eisenhower found that there were fewer than fifteen divisions of questionable readiness and only 1,000 aircraft of various types to defend all of NATO. One British officer in occupied West Germany remarked in May 1950 that only the two U.S. divisions (out of the fifteen available) were combat ready. Meanwhile, NATO intelligence estimated that the Soviets had at least twenty-five divisions and 6,000 aircraft in Eastern Europe alone (with many more units and aircraft available in the Soviet Union proper). Even after Eisenhower received another four U.S. divisions (instead of the ten to twelve he requested), thereby raising the total U.S. commitment to six divisions, the Soviets still held a large manpower advantage.
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Yet West Germany posed the biggest obstacle to European unity facing Eisenhower. By early 1950, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had come to believe that a viable defense of Europe required the participation of still-occupied West Germany.
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In the same dinner conversation Eisenhower related, It [is] unthinkable to let Germany rearm independently, the Germans might be disposed to play the Soviet Union off the West or... make some sort of alliance with the Soviet Union for tactical purposes .... If this should ever occur, the defense posture of Western Europe... would be very difficult, to say the least.
Source: NATO COMMANDER TO COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
What you often see on the internet is people talking about how NATO is just expanding due to the seemingly omnipotent “evil west”. But the more you look into it you realize that every country that joined had their own complicated problems, politics and fears they were dealing with that set them on that course. When people speak about geopolitics and concoct their grand political theories they tend to minimize history and the will of millions of people just to sell the story they want to tell.
This is part one of an on going multi-part series so please subscribe and thank you for reading.
If I made any mistakes here please don’t be afraid to comment.