NATO Founded

APR 04 1949 · 12:00

President Truman signs the instrument of ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty in the Oval Office, 24 August 1949. Place: Departmental Auditorium, Washington Figures: Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State · Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary · Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister · Halvard Lange, Norwegian Foreign Minister · the foreign ministers of the other eight founding signatories Twelve Signatures The Brussels Treaty of 17 March 1948 commits five Western European states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom) to mutual defense, but without American participation it lacks credible deterrent weight. Senator Arthur Vandenberg's Resolution 239 of 11 June 1948 clears the constitutional path for the United States to enter a peacetime alliance, the first since the 1778 treaty with revolutionary France. Negotiations at Washington run from July 1948 to March 1949. Twelve states sign on 4 April 1949: the five Brussels Treaty members plus the United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal. Italy's inclusion is the contested case (former Axis; large Communist Party; barely on the Atlantic), accepted on French insistence and over Norwegian misgiving. Iceland's inclusion is the one against the Icelandic public's wishes; the riots in Reykjavík on 30 March 1949, the day the Althing ratifies, will not be forgotten in Icelandic memory. Article 5 The treaty's substantive commitment is Article 5: an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, with each party committed to assist by such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force. The qualifier (as it deems necessary) preserves the Westphalian sovereign right of each member to determine its own response, while the collective framing commits the alliance as a whole. The Senate ratifies on 21 July 1949 by 82 to 13. The Federal Republic of Germany joins in 1955, prompting the Soviet response of the Warsaw Pact two weeks later. Spain joins after Franco's death (1982); the post-1989 enlargements take the alliance to 32 members by 2024 (with Finland 2023, Sweden 2024). Article 5 is invoked exactly once in the alliance's first seventy-five years, by the United States on 12 September 2001. The Westphalian principle of sovereign self-defense, pooled across a continent and an ocean, becomes the longest-lived military alliance in modern history. Video: Foreign ministers of the twelve founding members sign the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium, Washington, with President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson present.