NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Naturę of International Alliances: Theoretical Expectations and the Empirical Record
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: "The power vacuum in Europe after World War II induced the United States and the \nSoviet Union to seek European allies against one another (an action that neorealists \nwould describe as “external balancing”). The disparate geopolitical circumstances \nfacing the two superpowers were bound to have some effect on the types of alliances \nthey sought. In the United States, many officials and legislators initially were \nreluctant to maintain a permanent military presence in Europe. They planned instead \nto help the West European states themselves acquire the wherewithal to sustain \na viable balance against the Soviet Union. Not until after the outbreak of the Korean \nWar in June 1950 did U.S. perceptions of the Soviet threat change enough to \ngenerate widespread support for a huge increase in the U.S. military commitment \nto Western Europe. By that point, U.S. officials already sensed, from the Berlin \ncrisis of 1948–1949, that the United States would need an extensive network of \nmilitary bases in Western Europe if it wished to deter or rebuff Soviet probes on \nthe continent. The increased deployment of U.S. troops and weapons in Europe \nfrom late 1950 on was geared toward that end, and was also intended to reassure \nthe West Europeans of the strength of the U.S. commitment to their defense. That \ncommitment had been nominally codified in April 1949 – primarily at the West \nEuropeans’ initiative – with the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization \n(NATO), but it was not until the early 1950s, after the shock of Korea, \nthat the United States began putting up the resources needed to fulfill its military \nobligations to NATO."(...)
Author: Mark Kramer
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3198961504