NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the most important military alliance in the
world, has just turned 70.
This anniversary comes in the midst of one of the most significant political and diplomatic
crises it has suffered in its entire history.
Today on VISUALPOLITIK, you and I will get to know NATO a little better.
Because... as 2019 marks the anniversary of NATO, some of the VISUALPOLITIK team traveled
to Romania to learn more about how this organization works, to talk to some of the people in charge
and to witness NATO maneuvers live.
Don’t tell me that isn’t a fitting way to celebrate its 70th birthday.
(We visited the exercise “Vigorous Warrior 2019”.
It was held in Sibiu, Romania.)
This video is one of three videos in which we’ll try to get to know this institution
a little bit better, we’ll see how it works today, how it has changed over the years and
the challenges it faces for the years ahead.
So... without further ado, let's go.
On April 4th, 1949, the treaty of the North Atlantic was signed, which led to NATO, the
most important military alliance of all time.
Throughout these 70 years, the organization has changed a lot, but most significantly,
it has grown.
You see, it was originally it was an agreement between 12 countries.
Today, it has no less than 29 members.
The United States, Canada, Turkey and 26 other European states, including several former
members of the Warsaw Pact which was the former military alliance formed between the Soviet
Union and the Eastern Bloc countries.
Very soon, The Republic of North Macedonia will become the 30th member of the organization.
Folks, we’re talking about an alliance that represents almost one billion people, half
of the world's economic power and most of the world’s military spending.
An organization with joint command structures and troops that train together to be able
to respond to a crisis in a coordinated manner.
This global defence alliance wields an unprecedented power.
Because, folks, the 29 countries that currently constitute NATO, have an accumulated annual
military spending of more than one trillion US dollars.
That is, almost 60% of all the military spending of all the countries in the world.
But hold on just a moment.
Despite having most of the world’s military spending power, and being bigger and more
powerful than ever before, NATO isn’t exactly enjoying its golden era..
This is something we have already talked about in several videos on VISUALPOLITIK.
Well, in this and two upcoming videos, we’ll explain what’s happening and how NATO has
evolved over the years, the threats it faces and its possible future.
But let’s start with a bit of history.
(THE THREAT OF THE RED ARMY)
The 1940s are about to end.
The Second World War ended just four years prior.
The greatest conflict of all time has left tens of millions of war victims, not only
direct war deaths but countless additional lives cut short due to disease and the political
brutality of totalitarian ideologies.
The end of the Second World War meant the end of Nazism, but at the same time, it also
led to the emergence of a new split that would divide not only Europe, but also the world,
for decades.
Folks, the Cold War had started.
At that time, The European continent was devastated, it was economically shattered and its armies
were tattered and demobilized
However, there was an important difference between Eastern and Western Europe.
On the one hand, Eastern Europe was under the Soviet Union’s control, which maintained
more than five million soldiers in the region for many years.
On the other hand, the presence of US and UK troops on the continent shrunk very quickly.
Between 1945 and 1946 the contingents from these two countries deployed in continental
Europe dropped from 4.5 million soldiers to less than 900,000.
That is to say, by the end of the 40s, the difference in favor of the Soviet troops was
of 5 to 1.
That’s a huge difference.
And not only that, at that time communism was an expanding political force... spreading
to countries all around the globe.
And of course Moscow was very, very certain that it wasn’t going to loosen its grip
on Europe.
Want an example?
Well… check this out.
In 1947, the Czech Republic accepted the Marshall Plan... but was soon after forced to renounce
due to pressure from Moscow.
Only a year later, in 1948, there was a coup that placed the country firmly under communist
control.
In that same year, the Soviet Union carried out the Berlin Blockade, meaning West Berlin
had to be supplied by a staggering airlift of 900 daily flights for months on end.
Anyway, folks, these were the circumstances that created real fear in Western Europe that
the Soviet troops would advance to occupy new countries, such as the Federal Republic
of Germany, or even the entire continent.
It was for precisely this reason that France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands
and Luxembourg swiftly agreed on a mutual defense clause in the Brussels Treaty.
This was also done in 1948.
But fearing that this wasn’t enough; these countries quickly turned to the United States:
the defense of Europe’s free countries had to be ensured.
And that’s how, finally, on April 4th, 1949, 12 countries – France, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Iceland, Portugal, Canada and
the United States – signed the Treaty of Washington or the North Atlantic Treaty that
gave birth to NATO.
NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, summed up the goal of the alliance as “keeping
the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.
Kai Weiss, Research and Outreach Officer at the Austrian Economics Center.)
It was precisely in this founding treaty that famous Article 5 was established:
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.)
In other words, a very clear agreement: all for one and one for all.
"We hope to create a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression; a bulwark which
will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society; the business of
achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.”
Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America)
But... it didn’t stop there.
In 1952, Turkey and Greece joined the alliance and three years later, in 1955, the German
Federal Republic joined.
And it was soon after that the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, except for
Yugoslavia, created their own alliance, the Warsaw Pact;
An alliance that unified the power of all of Europe’s socialist countries:
We’re talking about more than six million soldiers, 65,000 tanks, 15,000 combat aircraft,
2,000 warships and nuclear missiles distributed among the member states.
Europe was truly divided, two great military alliances confronted each other across a line
sketched on a map.
So, at this point, you may be wondering.
What has NATO really done?
How many missions, how many interventions have they led?
How has the alliance changed?
Listen up.
(A DECISIVE YEAR)
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO, an organization
created to face the Soviet threat, didn’t decrease its activity.
On the contrary: it slowly began to have a much more active role, both inside and outside
Europe.
Throughout this process, 1999 was a key year.
In that year, three new countries joined the alliance: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Remember that these three countries had once belonged to the Warsaw Pact and had therefore
been seen by NATO for decades as enemy countries.
It was, folks, the beginning of a process that over the years led NATO to include a
large number of former Eastern Bloc countries that had been under Soviet control:
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania... even Albania.
This huge expansion of NATO infuriated the Russian political elite, but gave the organization
much more strength while also aiding these newly independent countries to accelerate
and consolidate their reforms without fear of reprisals from Russia.
But that, folks, isn’t all.
1999 was also the year where NATO carried out its first major offensive:
It intervened in the former Yugoslavia to stop the ethnic cleansing that the Serbian
leader, Slobodan Milosevic, was carrying out against the Kosovo Albanian population.
To stop the Serbian government, NATO carried out heavy attacks against political and military
targets.
Folks, NATO’s spirit had changed, it was no longer just a defensive organization.
At any given moment, there was even speculation of a possible terrestrial invasion of Serbia
with NATO troops.
And, you know what?
It is rumored that the then Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin was so humiliated and enraged
because NATO had dared to include Eastern European countries in its alliance, that he
threatened a Third World War.
If NATO’s troops tried to occupy Serbia, Russia would respond.
“I have warned NATO, the Americans and the Germans not to push us into military action,
otherwise there will certainly be a European war and maybe a world war.”
Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia)
In a way, years later in 2008, Moscow's threats became a reality.
Georgia’s approach, by Mikhail Sahasvilli, to the European Union and above all to NATO,
led the Russian government to unleash a war against this country.
The point, folks, is that in the last few years we’ve seen NATO take a much more active
role.
In addition to their continued expansion and the intervention in Serbia, NATO has also
intervened in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
And this has led to huge controversy:
The current debate goes something like this.
Should NATO become an institution that acts where needed to protect its member states,
even if they aren’t under direct attack?
Should it step in if human rights are being seriously violated anywhere in the world?
Or should it be limited to being exclusively a defense alliance, that is, limit itself
to act only if a member country is militarily attacked?
In short, does NATO make sense today as it was originally intended?
And, be careful, because the implications of this debate are huge.
After all, we’re talking about the future of the world and the role of the most important
military alliance of all time.
We’re talking about a debate that is at the forefront and that in recent times has
had the President of the United States, Donald Trump, as an undisputed protagonist.
He claims that NATO no longer works, that it doesn’t make sense, that it should become
obsolete.
And this gives rise to another question.
So far NATO has always worked under the leadership of the United States, but...
Could it still work and have a future if the United States stepped down from its leadership
position?
Even if the US remained a member, could NATO be compatible with a new European military
leadership structure?
This is a topic that we’ve already talked about here on VISUALPOLITIK on several occasions,
but folks, we’ll take a more detailed look in a future video.
For now, we can say that despite their problems and mistakes, NATO has been a huge success.
I mean, Europe today enjoys an environment of peace, safety and cooperation between countries.
Come on, it’s like a gang of good friends.
And don’t think that this was always the case.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
For centuries, conflicts and wars between European nations were routine events, and
even after the Second World War, the tension between the West and the East only flourished.
In many respects NATO fulfilled its purpose perfectly, even though its member countries
haven’t always gotten along and have had their good and bad times, like when France
withdrew from the joint military structure – not the alliance – in 1966.
Anyway folks, that’s the story of how NATO was born, grew and changed.
In a future video we’ll examine what the alliance means today and what threats it faces.
So I really hope you enjoyed this video, please hit like if you did, and don’t forget to
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Don’t forget to check out our friends at the Reconsider Media Podcast - they provided
the voiceover in this episode.
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And as always, I’ll see you in the next video.