Historical Perspectives of NATO

Lawrence Kaplan, in "After forty years: reflections on NATO as a research field," reflects back from the perspective of c. 1990 on the state of scholarly discussion of NATO as it stood in 1974, on the occasion of NATO's 25th anniverary, when the alliance was just half its present age. As the first "entangling alliance" entered into by the United States since its brief 18th century alignment with France, writes Kaplan, "NATO should have been a magnet for American historians. But this was not the case in 1974. The contribution of historians to the enormous body of NATO literature has been minimal" (Kaplan, 1992, p. 15).

This paucity of American historical consideration of NATO, he suggests, reflected an outlook in which NATO was seen as merely an incidental aspect of overall

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rather it is an apologia for French views at the time. But it touches so nearly on historical issues as to be appropriate for consideration in this essay. Beaufre approaches the question of NATO from the perspective of European integration, a persistent theme of postwar French thought and diplomacy. To Beaufre, An Atlantic community with the United States is without question a reasonable and desireable idea, but this community would be very dangerous if it were effected under present conditions, with a divided Europe. In my opinion European union is the prerequisite to a reunion with the United States (Beaufre, 1966, p. 6). Beaufre restates the European origins of NATO (1966, pp. 15-16), and then goes on to present the uneasy European views of developments in American nuclear strategy. In the 1950s, American policy had been based on "massive retaliation," an all-or-nothing response by the US nuclear forces to any serious aggression. Under Kennedy, this policy was shifted to "flexible response," scaled to the level of threat, and including conventional and tactical nuclear options. Beaufre approves of much in Kennedy's strategy, but flexible response was alarming for Europe, holding out the specter of a war fought
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Approximate Word count = 2659
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)