NATO 70 Year Celebration

April 4, 2019

Flag of NATO

There’s a European and American joint celebration. Seventy years ago, April 4, 1949, eleven European nations, Canada, and the United States signed an alliance with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO represents the solidarity between the U.S. and its European allies that ensure the peaceful progress of Europe following the end of World War II. Today, the alliance remains a keystone of the defense of Europe and across the world when global social justice and economic cooperation are in jeopardy. As recently as June 5, 2017, Montenegro officially became the twenty-ninth “Ally” of NATO.

For seventy years, America and other member nations have been a participant force of unity for peace, security and mutual aid of NATO and each has a recognized role in the importance of mutual defense for the democracies across Europe and beyond.

NATO’s commitment to peace includes the Partnership for Peace initiative that is based on “democratic principles to increase stability, diminish threats to peace, and build strengthened security relations between NATO and non-member countries in the Euro-Atlantic.”

The success and future of NATO is dependent on its member nations of 29 countries (and growing) to continue to safeguard freedom and communication to build stronger relationships with allies to handle solutions in crisis management and peacekeeping around the globe.

Read through select books in our International Affairs and International Organization collections to learn about some of NATO’s initiatives that have impacted U.S foreign policy throughout the last seventy years. A few featured publications from these collections include:

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, V. XL1, Western Europe: NATO, 1969-1972. Part of the State Department’s FRUS series, this volume  highlights U.S. policy regarding European economic and political integration, U.S. participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as U.S. bilateral relations with Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Stepping Up: Burden Sharing by NATO’s Newest Members examines the burden sharing behavior of new NATO members. It makes the argument that new NATO members are burden sharing at a greater rate than older NATO members. It discusses how new NATO members have demonstrated the willingness to contribute to NATO missions, case studies, interviews with key NATO officials, and more.

NATO Cyberspace Capability: A Strategic and Operational Evolution. This publication discusses the development of cyberspace defense capabilities for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and how it has been making steady progress since its formal introduction at the North Atlantic Council Prague Summit in 2002. Bolstered by numerous cyber attacks such as those in Estonia in 2007, Alliance priorities were formalized in subsequent NATO cyber defense policies that were adopted in 2008, 2011, and 2014. This monograph examines the past and current state of NATO’s cyberspace defense efforts by assessing the appropriateness and sufficiency of them to address anticipated threats to member countries, including the United States.

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HOW DO I OBTAIN THESE RESOURCES?

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About the author: Blogger contributor Ed Kessler is a Promotions Specialist in GPO’s Publication and Information Sales program office.

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Posted by Trudy Hawkins

Four Decades since Détente and SALT

May 18, 2012

Forty years ago next week marked a historic point in Soviet-American relations. On May 22, 1972, President Richard Nixon landed in Moscow for an unprecedented week-long summit with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Premier Alexei Kosygin and other Soviet officials that culminated in the SALT I Treaty and marked the height of the détente era.

In honor of this four decade anniversary, I thought I’d write about an insightful publication by the State Department entitled “Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969-1972” that covers this important period that marked a détente or a “thawing” of Cold War relations between the two superpowers.

Extremely interesting are the forewords by both Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. In them, they talk about their personal relationship that forged “The Channel” of communications between the two governments that finally led to the breakthrough in negotiations.

Kissinger reminisces:

On March 25, 1971, according to the transcript of a telephone conversation with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, I remarked: “When we are both out of government service, which will be a lot later for you than for me, I hope you will let me read the reports you send in on me.” … My remark to Dobrynin was an interlude in what evolved into almost daily exchanges. What was later named “The Channel” began as a general exchange of views. Starting in 1971, the Channel became the principal venue for U.S.-Soviet relations.

Don’t change “The Channel”  

According to Kissinger in “The Détente Years”, “The Channel” became one of the pathways of change, and “produced a number of significant agreements”, including:

  • an agreed approach on Strategic Arms Limitation (May 1971);
  • the conclusion of an agreement regarding access to Berlin (September 1971);
  • the announcement of a Soviet-American summit agreement (October 1971); and
  • President Nixon’s visit to Moscow (May 1972), at which agreements, the most important of which were a treaty regulating Ballistic Missile Defense and a five-year freeze on deploying additional offensive strategic weapons, were concluded. The two sides also published an agreed statement on principles of international conduct.

Image: Nixon and Brezhnev shake after signing the SALT treaty on May 26, 1972 (Source: Corbis Images).

Pass the SALT, please

The highlight of the publication is the discussion about the lead-up and issues during the Moscow Summit and the final negotiations of the SALT I Treaty.

SALT I, the first series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, had begun in November 1969 to explore ways to halt or reduce the arms race, particularly nuclear weapon proliferation. This week of meetings from May 22 to 26, was set up after those years of negotiations to finalize and sign a number of agreements that increased cooperation and reduced the mutual nuclear threat between the two nations.

Image: Nuclear Limits. (Source: Time Magazine, 1972)

On May 26, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), the most significant of the multiple agreements reached during the Moscow summit. The terms of the SALT treaty limited the USSR and the United States to only 200 anti-ballistic missiles each, which had to be split between two defensive systems.

One good (hand)shake leads to another

Among all the handshakes at this Moscow summit was another for the “Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Cooperation in the Fields of Science and Technology” which laid the groundwork for the first joint Soviet-US space flight. Called the Apollo Soyuz Test Project or ASTP, the ASTP flight lasted only nine days from July 15-24, 1975, but led to another famous handshake… this time in space.

Image: Photo of the famous handshake between Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford (f.g.) and cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov after a successful linkup in space of the Americans’ Apollo and the Soviets’ Soyuz spacecrafts on July 17, 1975  (Source: NASA ASTP gallery).

Innovation = Bureaucratic dismay

All in all, this publication provides unique insights from the players involved about the diplomatic communications and procedural changes and innovations that were put in place on both sides to eliminate the logjam in relations between Soviets and American administrations since the end of World War II. And sometimes these changes were done “outside” the normal processes.

As Kissinger explains in the book:

Paradoxically, the Channel worked best so long as the bureaucracy did not know of its existence. While that was the case, the participants in the interdepartmental machinery had an incentive to adjust their positions toward what they thought was feasible; in general, no one wanted to assume responsibility for failure by inflexibility…

For all the bureaucratic dismay it caused, the Channel was an innovative attempt to transcend the formalities of an increasingly bureaucratized diplomacy. It helped contain crises, saw America through a period of domestic divisions and sketched prospects for a more peaceful world.

HOW DO I OBTAIN “Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969-1972”?

  • Buy it online 24/7 at GPO’s Online Bookstore.
  • Buy it at GPO’s retail bookstore at 710 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC 20401, open Monday-Friday, 9am to 4pm, except Federal holidays, (202) 512-0132.
  • Find it in a library.

About the Author:  Michele Bartram is Promotions Manager for GPO’s Publication and Information Sales Division and is responsible for online and offline marketing of the US Government Online Bookstore (Bookstore.gpo.gov) and promoting Federal government content to the public.

10 Comments | Department of State, Foreign Relations, NASA, Nuclear, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Michele Bartram, U.S. Government Online Bookstore

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