New Tests for Nato
Article Summary and Author Biography
Author's Note: Let it be clearly understood that this article can in no way be regarded as expressing the official NATO opinion. It is simply my personal contribution to the study of certain problems. I am not at all sure that it reflects the common views of the 15 governments which are signatories to the Treaty of Washington, and for that reason I speak only for myself.
PAUL-HENRI SPAAK, Secretary General of NATO since 1957; three times Prime Minister of Belgium and four times Minister for Foreign Affairs; President of the U.N. General Assembly, 1946
I DO not intend to set forth once again the historical and political considerations which necessitated and to this day justify the existence of the Atlantic Alliance. At the most I should like only to state that NATO today seems to me to be every bit as essential as it was in 1949, and perhaps more so. During the ten years which have elapsed, the Communist world has not grown weaker. The threat which it represents to the free world has, indeed, been aggravated in that it is now economic as well as military and is spreading far beyond the borders of Europe to Asia and Africa. With each passing day I am more convinced that the surest and perhaps the only way to resist it successfully is to develop among the countries belonging to the Alliance a sense of oneness based on mutual understanding and loyalty.
Fortunately NATO is not, as some people think, in a state of crisis. On the contrary, it is flourishing.
No one can deny that the Alliance has been wholly successful in its essential purpose of halting the expansion of Soviet imperialism in Europe without the need to resort to force. Soviet imperialism, which chalked up one conquest after another in the period from 1939 to 1948, has made no further progress in Europe since the day the Atlantic Alliance was formed. Only a confirmed skeptic could regard this as fortuitous. The fact is that it constitutes the direct and very logical outcome of what we in the West have accomplished. Small wonder that the Soviet Union has been persistently and rabidly hostile to NATO.
If this is true, then surely it would be the utmost folly to dissolve or even weaken the Alliance. To do so would be simply to restore the conditions which made the gains of Soviet imperialism possible. This consideration should be a signal to the policy-makers to proceed with caution...
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