NATO SURVIVAL

Why did NATO survive the end of the Cold War?

Why did NATO survive the end of the Cold War?

Introduction

The geopolitical tension among the United States and its western allies, and the USSR and its satellites, after the World War II, is described as the Cold war. It was a political and military tension between the western world and the communist world (Maloney, 2004). This had begun when their temporary alliance against the Nazi Germany, making the US and USSR as two superpowers with weighty political and economic differences. The Soviet Union along with the countries of Eastern Europe countries which, it occupied formed the Eastern Bloc asserting these as satellite states (Lialiouti, 2011). However, the Marshal Plan of United States supported the countries of Western Europe. The United States faked NATO, a military coalition using control of communism as a major approach through the Truman Policy, in 1949, while in 1955; Warsaw Pact was formed by the Soviet bloc. A few countries allied with either of the US or the USSR, whilst the rest remained neutral with the Non-Aligned Movement.

Discussion

The Cold War was the heyday of world conflict, the 1917 with the Russian October Revolution under Lenin began to lead the Russian Civil War drew to itself, to which Western forces on counter-revolutionary side participated, and in the 1920s and 1930s by the export of revolution of the Communist International had continued (Adler, 2008). Since 1941, the anti-Hitler coalition covered conflict the temporary. In the post-war period were the various goals and interests of the superpowers out in the reorganization of the world and led to the division of Europe into two hostile blocs with accompanying military alliances: the NATO and the states of the Warsaw Pact. Their expansion was broadly the military presence of US troops and the Red Army (Wallander, 2000).

NATO was formed on the 4th of April 1949, in Washington and was originally built collectively by the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, Luxembourg, Italy, Netherlands and Norway (Sarotte, 2010). Later, in 1952, joined Greece and Turkey and in 1954, West Germany. The proclaimed objective was the defense of autonomous existence through close cooperation from politics and the economy among all member countries of the treaty. At first, the proposal was that they not extend more than twenty years but his prominence certainly continues today. Meanwhile, the Warsaw Pact (shown), brought together those countries that were part of the Soviet bloc. The Warsaw Pact was signed on May 14, 1955 in the capital of Poland and joined it with the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In 1956 East Germany also became a part of the Pact (Ganser, 2005).

In 1970 both sides sought a detente, to lessen the risk of a possible nuclear war, and to alleviate political tensions. In 1980s, the United States increased military, diplomatic and economic strain on the USSR, when it was already being suffered by economic stagnation (Sperling & Webber, ...