History of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty

The beginning of the process of forming a defense union of Western countries is possible to consider the meeting in Brussels on March 4, 1948 of the representatives of Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France, at which the Anglo-French proposal to draw up a treaty on mutual help. On March 17, 1948, the Treaty of Brussels was signed. The aim of the Brussels Treaty was joint opposition possible future aggression by Germany, as well as military cooperation in response to possible Soviet aggression.

In the event of foreign aggression under the treaty, the relatively small Allied forces had to act together. However, at the first meetings of the Allied Defense Ministers, which assessed the available military resources of the member states, they concluded that they were insufficient and necessary to receive assistance, including from the United States - the idea of ​​expanding the Western Defense Union at the expense of the United States and Canada. creation of a common defense system in the Euro-Atlantic area. In March-April 1948, French Foreign Minister Georges Bidot and British Foreign Secretary Ernst Bevin addressed the White House with proposals. The publicity concept received during Speech in the Parliament of Canada by the Minister of Foreign Affairs (later - the Prime Minister) of this country Louis San Loren on April 28, 1948. The next major step in the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty was the adoption by the US Senate on June 11, 1948, of a resolution allowing the government to enter into alliances in peacetime with other nations outside the Americas. The realization of the idea of ​​creating a common defense system has moved into practice.

In November 1948, a draft of the Atlantic Pact, drafted by the Council of the Western European Union, was sent to Washington. The agreed project was prepared in December of the same year. During the same period, the idea of ​​involving a number of Nordic countries in the planned project arose and Southern Europe, where discussions were under way to establish a Scandinavian and Mediterranean regional security pact. The proposal did not find adequate support from the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland), but expressed a desire to sign the treaty Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal. The text of the future Treaty of the Twelve States was published for public use on March 18, 1949.

The preparation of the Treaty was sharply opposed by the USSR, whose government issued a note of protest on March 31, 1949, stating that the union was aggressive and contrary to both the UN Charter and the existing treaties between the Soviet Union and Great Britain, France. and the United States. In response, the foreign ministers of the signatory countries in a statement dated April 2 rejected the allegations, emphasizing the purely defensive nature of the alliance and its compliance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949 in Washington by representatives of the governments of Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, the Portuguese Republic, the United States of America, and the French Republic.

After the ratification process of the Treaty by all parties and the deposit of the relevant documents in the United States, it entered into force on August 24, 1949. NATO was born as a result of the UN's inability to ensure world peace at a time when the Soviet Union vetoed many of the organisation's Security Council resolutions. To legitimize the new organization, they used paragraph 51 of the UN Charter, in Part 5, as part of a legitimate collective defense. The concept of the newly formed international organization was described by its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, as "keeping the Russians at a distance, the Americans inside (Europe) and the Germans under control."

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