“We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ... to live together in peace with one another as good neighbors and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security … have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.”

Such are the core ideas behind the birth of the United Nations (UN) organization in June 1945. These ideas are the product of weariness and wariness about new wars breaking out, as well as of the realization that, in spite of divergences, the world is tending towards unity. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had his own vision of this new interdependency, intended to establish its rules. Unfortunately, the UN organization and its Security Council proved inadequate in attempting to suppress or simply ease the mounting tension between the communist states and the Free World. Hence the profound deception that followed, since much hope had been placed in the United Nations. Faced with the frenzied aggressiveness of world communism – led by Moscow – it was becoming essential to equip the Free World with an efficient security system.

NATO’s purpose

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the most important regional pact concluded within this system and the United States is the main protagonist behind the creation of this pact. Similar imperatives underlie the creation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the Baghdad Pact (renamed the Central Treaty Organization, CENTO) and the security pact signed between the United States and Japan, as well as the United States’ intervention in Korea under the United Nations flag. In terms of Western policy, this system – one that is not closed on itself – is the practical consequence of the ‘containment’ policy. This ‘containment’ policy is the policy that all too easily replaced ‘rollback’ – the driving back, with varying degrees of violence, of world communism from the positions it had gained through strength or cunning. The containment policy, on the other hand, held steadfast against all attempts to replace it with a policy of retreat.

When the North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4th April 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany did not yet exist, but the fact that the world was split into two was perhaps more obvious than it is 15 years later. […]

OUTLINE

• NATO’s purpose
• International changes and the transformation of NATO
• Burden-sharing, geographic limits and Alliance globalization

Eugen Gerstenmaier (1906-1986) distinguished himself by taking part in German resistance to Nazism through the Kreisau Circle, which was responsible for the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20th July 1944. He was a member of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and President of the Bundestag between 1954 and 1969.

The paper is translated by Clémence Sebag.