A venerable alliance

Just a few weeks ago, Sweden became the latest state to join NATO. That was an historic development, but even more importantly, April marks the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding. At a time when NATO faces the greatest threat in the past two decades on border with Russia, it is time to reflect on the way that this sturdy alliance has kept the peace.

Remember how NATO started. At the end of World War II, Soviet armies raced across Eastern and Central Europe and then refused to budge. In the first two years after the war—from Fall 1945 through the end of 1947—it is noteworthy to compare the difference between the areas liberated from Nazi conquest by Soviet armies versus those liberated by the United States and its allies. Both sides had promised that these countries would return to their pre-war independence—the most notable being the promise of free elections in Poland—but when it came to Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union lied. Moscow absorbed countries such as the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and occupied others, imposing repressive communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and elsewhere.

This is what Winston Churchill was talking about when he said, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘Iron Curtain’ has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.”

Of course, Stalin’s communist allies were not content to rest there. In the war’s aftermath they supported communists in France and Italy, contributing to political turmoil, and armed violent revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the governments of Greece and Turkey.

While the Soviets dismantled German factories and shipped them East and ruthlessly repressed Central and Eastern Europe, the United States raced to demobilize its military. The Western Allies, focused on justice, conceived of and led international military tribunals at Nuremberg and in Tokyo to hold accountable senior Axis leaders. Over time the United States developed the Marshall Plan, which provided financial assistance to many broken European economies. The United States and its closest allies led the formation of what would become the United Nations in 1949, with not only its own aspirational Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but a Security Council and a Charter agreed upon by the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and others.

Thus, two visions for a world order developed—the first was the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Soviet Union ruling its people and neighbors with an iron fist. In contrast, the United States and its allies promoted efforts at collective security, justice, human rights, and reconstruction, and even the integration of former adversaries into a global system of law and commerce.

Thus, it was the huge military presence of the Soviet Union, threatening Central and Western Europe, that caused the United States and its partners to found NATO, a collective security enterprise designed for mutual defense against aggression from the Soviet Union. If one NATO member state was attacked, it is considered an attack on all NATO member states (Article 5). Fortunately, this vigilance helped to maintain peace in the heart of Europe that lasted despite the blockade of West Berlin, Soviet belligerence, and conflagrations in other parts of the world such as Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.

One of the amazing features of NATO is that upon the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the break-up of the Soviet Union, NATO welcomed some of our former adversaries from that very same Warsaw Pact. These countries wanted to join NATO as an alliance of collective security, not just for their own interests, but for the common good of the entire North Atlantic region.

However, even just a few years ago no one would have predicted that Sweden and Finland would leave their longtime posture of neutrality and join NATO. Just as in 1949 and just as in in 1999, NATO is not seeking territorial expansion at the cost of its neighbors. It is not seeking to impose its will on the increasingly totalitarian government of Vladimir Putin and his cronies in Russia. Instead, Washington and our NATO allies recognize that robust collective security deters further aggression in the European theater. NATO continues to be an alliance for peace—and its mission is more important than ever.

Editor's note: This column has been corrected to reflect that the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin during the Berlin Crisis.