A military clique born of a confrontation mind- set
NATO’s origins lay mainly in the inherent hostility of Western capitalist nations, with the US and the UK at its core, to the world communist movement, as well as in the so- called Red Scare – the West’s fear of the Soviet Union’s power during World War II.
On March 5, 1946, in one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British prime minister Winston Churchill condemned the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declared, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening salvoes announcing the beginning of the Cold War.
In the founding of NATO, if the Iron Curtain speech was a passing attack before a goal was scored, the final kick was the Truman Doctrine. On March 12, 1947, one year after the Iron Curtain address, then US president Harry Truman delivered a speech to a joint session of US Congress, in which he devided the world into two camps: “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian communism.” In response to what he called the “threat” from the Soviet Union, he said actions must be taken to intervene and contain it, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine.
Starting from the Truman Doctrine, the US pursued the “Marshall Plan” in foreign economic policy and led the entrenchment of NATO in military and security policy. The Truman Doctrine was regarded as the “starting point” for the NATO mechanism and the Cold War trigger, by shifting from traditional policy from the Roosevelt era, which regarded the Soviet Union as an ally, to a policy aimed at containing the Soviet Union.
On April 4, 1949, the US and 11 other countries jointly signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, and NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization – was officially established. The principle of collective defense is at the very heart of NATO’s founding treaty and is enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Collective defense means that an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all allies.