1949. Twice in this century, American military intervention was necessary to counter the threat of German hegemony. After the end of the First World War, America withdrew into isolation. In 1945-1946, the great American army in Europe was rapidly demobilized. In 1947-1948, a series of events occurred which awakened Western Europeans and the United States to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Europe was prostrate economically and vulnerable to the threat of communist subversion. The Europeans had begun to organize themselves economically with American financial assistance through the Marshall Plan. On March 17, 1948, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxem-bourg had taken the first steps toward a military alliance by signing the Brussels Treaty. Since the United States then
possessed a nuclear monopoly, American participation was essential to give any Western alliance substance. The answer was NATO which was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949 and was ratified by the U.S. Senate on July 21 of that year by a vote of 82 to 13. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty an armed attack on any of the original signatories (the Brussles Treaty five plus the United States, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Norway, and Portugal), was an attack on all and required them to act in their common defense. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, West Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982.
Throughout history, multinational military alliances have tended to be unstable and to break down when the threats which gave them birth diminished. The Soviet threat, however, held
together the Atlantic Alliance until the era of Mikhail Gorbachev. The alliance withstood severe strains, such as the rift caused by the French withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966 and the growth of neutralism in Europe and Germany's ostpolitik during the period of detente in the 1970s. The Soviet buildup in nuclear and conventional arms helped Western leaders marshal t...