NATO enlargement during the Cold War: strategy and system in the Western alliance

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NATO Enlargement during the Cold War Strategy and System in the Western Alliance

Mark Smith

NATO Enlargement during the Cold War

Cold War History Series General Editor: Saki Dockrill, Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King’s College, London The new Cold War History Series aims to make available to scholars and students the results of advanced research on the origins and the development of the Cold War and its impact on nations, alliances and regions at various levels of statecraft, and in areas such as diplomacy, security, economy, military and society. Volumes in the series range from detailed and original specialised studies, proceedings of conferences, to broader and more comprehensive accounts. Each work deals with individual themes and periods of the Cold War and each author or editor approaches the Cold War with a variety of narrative, analysis, explanation, interpretation and reassessments of recent scholarship. These studies are designed to encourage investigation and debate on important themes and events in the Cold War, as seen from both East and West, in an effort to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon and place it in its context in world history. Titles include: Günter Bischof AUSTRIA IN THE FIRST COLD WAR, 1945–55 The Leverage of the Weak Martin H. Folly CHURCHILL, WHITEHALL AND THE SOVIET UNION, 1940–45 Saul Kelly COLD WAR IN THE DESERT Britain, the United States and the Italian Colonies, 1945–52 Donette Murray KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS Kevin Ruane THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EUROPEAN DEFENCE COMMUNITY Anglo-American Relations and the Crisis of European Defence, 1950–55

Cold War History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–79482–6 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

NATO Enlargement during the Cold War Strategy and System in the Western Alliance Mark Smith

© Mark Smith 2000 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2000 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). Outside North America ISBN 0–333–91818–5 hardback In North America ISBN 0–312–23606–9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Mark, 1965 July 1– NATO enlargement during the Cold War : strategy and system in the Western alliance / Mark Smith. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–312–23606–9 1. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 2. Europe—Foreign relations– –United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Europe. 4. Security, International. 5. World Politics, 1945– I. Title. D1065.E85 S65 2000 355'.031091821—dc21 00-033352 10 09

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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For my parents, with love and gratitude

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Contents Acknowledgements

ix

List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction The external context The intra-Alliance debate The taxonomy of membership

1 3 4 6

1 The North Atlantic Treaty in Context Continuity and change in European security ‘The curse of bipolarity’ and the idea of a Soviet threat The origins of the North Atlantic Treaty

11 12 14 18

2 The Membership Question and Neo-Enlargement, 1948–9 Negotiating the Treaty The membership issue Italy Scandinavia Portugal Conclusions

23 24 26 28 39 47 50

3 The Accession of Greece and Turkey, 1947–52 Greece, Turkey and the West, 1947–51 The rise of confrontation culture NATO strategy and adding the ‘O’ The accession decision Conclusions

62 63 69 72 74 87

4 The Federal Republic of Germany and NATO, 1949–55 The ‘German Question’ from top down to bottom up The creation of the West German state The forward strategy and rearmament The fall and rise of the NATO option The NATO option Conclusions vii

96 97 99 102 107 111 120

viii Contents

5 Spain Joins the Alliance, 1982–6 Spain, the US and NATO: the quasi-Alliance Crisis and continuity in NATO NATO and Spanish accession, 1976–86 The Spanish decision to join NATO Conclusions

127 128 136 139 145 156

Conclusions External factors The intra-Alliance debate The taxonomy of membership NATO in the Cold War and beyond

162 162 167 171 173

Notes

178

Select Bibliography

198

Index

204

Acknowledgements This book began life as my PhD thesis, and like all doctoral students I’m in great debt to a number of people. My greatest debt is to my supervisor Professor John Baylis and also, over the final lap, to Dr Colin McInnes. Both have guided me through what is inevitably a testing and sometimes trying experience with constant intellectual and personal support. I’d also like to thank Dr Tim Dunne and Dr Nicholas Wheeler, who read some of my work when it was a very different thesis from the one I submitted, and gave invaluable advice whilst I worked out what I thought an international system was. Several friends also took time out from their own work to read through some of mine, or simply listened to and commented on my ideas. For this, I want to thank Mike Andersen, Alan Collins, David Doyle, James Jackson, Paul Roe, Tom Schoettli and Maja Zehfuss. All the above people pointed out my good ideas, and tactfully informed me about the lousy ones; as is customary at this point, I ought to point out that they aren’t to blame if some of the latter survive in this book. Finally, Saki Dockrill accepted the manuscript as part of the Cold War History series, and gave much helpful advice about turning a thesis into a book. My research was funded by the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. It would have been impossible to accomplish without this, and I am very grateful for it. I was also fortunate enough to be awarded research grants from the Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. These funded a trip to the US archives, and thereby provided an important dimension to my research that could not have been obtained elsewhere. I’m also grateful to all the people I met in Independence and Abilene, who went out of their way to make a slightly disoriented research student feel enormously welcome. On a more personal note, I have sizeable debts to my friends in Aberystwyth and elsewhere. Some are name-checked above, but many others are not. In particular, Shaun and Alison, Ben, Marie, Palena, Antone, Simon, office-mates Paul and Dave, and my friends from 2A deserve special mention. Finally, my greatest personal debt is to my family: to my parents, and Nick and Jo. None of what follows would have come to fruition without their love and support. MARK SMITH ix

List of Abbreviations ACE BTO CIA CINCSOUTH CoS ECSC EDC EEC EU FO IBERLANT JCS MECOM NAC NATO NSC PCI PSOE SACEUR SACME SDU SHAPE UCD UN WET WEU

Allied Command, Europe Brussels Treaty Organisation Central Intelligence Agency (US) Commander in Chief, Southern Europe Chiefs of Staff (Britain) European Coal and Steel Community European Defence Community European Economic Community European Union Foreign Office (Britain) Iberian Atlantic Command Joint Chiefs of Staff (US) Middle East Command North Atlantic Council North Atlantic Treaty Organisation National Security Council Communist Party (Italy) Socialist Party (Spain) Supreme Allied Commander, Europe Supreme Allied Commander, Middle East Scandinavian Defence Union Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe Union of the Democratic Centre (Spain) United Nations Washington Exploratory Talks (on Security) Western European Union

x

Introduction When the Cold War was brought to an end, NATO was in an apparently anomalous position. Deprived of those features of post-war Europe – confrontation, ideological division, large standing military forces – which had apparently sustained it for 40 years, the Alliance was deprived of not only an obvious role but possibly a reason for existence. And yet, at the Madrid Summit in July 1997, NATO made its longawaited decision to expand its membership to include three states formerly part of the Warsaw Pact: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. This decision can be traced back to 1994 and President Clinton’s decision that the Alliance ought to take the plunge and expand, but in fact enlargement had been a persistently occurring theme in debates about NATO’s future after the Cold War. Discussion of the enlargement issue was almost exclusively centred on the question of whether the Alliance should take on new members, and was thus closely concerned with the effect this would have on security in Europe.1 This itself, because of its focus on the immediate implications of enlargement for post-Cold War security, led to an unspoken assumption that expansion was new territory for the Alliance, similar to the decision to deploy forces out-of-area in Bosnia and Kosovo. In fact, NATO has a solid historical experience of expansion: Greece and Turkey in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982. However, it was rare to read an account that mentioned this experience. This appears to be due to a tacit understanding that Cold War enlargements were driven by Cold War reasoning, and therefore had little in common with the present debates. The rare accounts that did mention past expansions used the experience as a tool either to support or to deplore contemporary enlargement. Strobe Talbott, for example, cited previous experience as evidence of NATO’s beneficial effects on new members and on regional stability.2 In contrast, Michael MccGwire declared that ‘the circumstances do not bear comparison . . . The most important factor in bringing stability to what was to become NATO Europe was the vast superiority in wealth and resources enjoyed by the US’.3 Both these arguments refer only briefly to past expansion in the context of their overall case on contemporary enlargement. Both also are more interested in the consequences of historical enlargement than in 1

2 Introduction

a close analysis of how and why expansion happened. Such an analysis, of course, was not their purpose, but this does highlight a gap in the historical study of the Alliance. Despite the voluminous literature on NATO and several studies of individual cases of expansion, there does not appear to be any work on enlargement as a feature of Alliance politics. It may well be that comparisons between Cold War and post-Cold War expansion are unsound, given the radically different political, strategic and institutional differences in context. However, Cold War expansion offers a potentially more productive area of study. It has the advantage of a single permanent context – the Cold War – and therefore correlations between cases are not as problematic as they might be between Cold War and post-Cold War instances. Two key advantages of such a study are, first, that it will provide an insight into the relationship between NATO and the Cold War. Many of the accounts that were pessimistic about NATO’s post-Cold War survival argued that the Alliance could not, rather than should not, endure; few argued for it to be wound up as an act of policy.4 Much of this pessimism was drawn from a particular idea of what the Alliance was for: Nelson and Szayna note that ‘alliances are self-help systems in which states cooperate to enhance security against actors perceived to pose a threat. They almost always disband when their unequivocal enemy disappears.’5 However, this has clearly not happened: NATO has not only survived, but appears to be flourishing. An analysis of Cold War enlargement, therefore, should at least entertain the possibility of there being more than a Cold War agenda to the Alliance. Moreover, it holds the promise of shedding some light on the relationship that did exist between NATO and the Cold War, and thereby the purpose of the Alliance for its members and prospective members. Second, such a study will uncover some of the internal dynamics of the Alliance itself. Much analysis of NATO’s Cold War decisions is focused on specific tasks, such as force-level commitments, burdensharing, and strategy. Enlargement decisions, in contrast, are not an undertaking to follow a task, but are concerned with embracing a new member. As such, they are of a different nature to other Alliance decisions. This is not to say that factors involved in other decisions will be inoperative in enlargement, but it does suggest that we may expect the dynamics to be different. Moreover, the lack of attention given to enlargement per se means that this can add an important dimension to our understanding of the Alliance. To summarise, the question that this study will attempt to answer is a simple one: why did NATO enlarge during the Cold War? The fol-

Introduction 3

lowing section utilises three overarching themes, which are applied throughout the study: the impact of external factors, the nature of the internal debate and the taxonomy of membership.

The external context NATO is usually referred to as ‘the Alliance’, with a capital ‘A’. There is a certain potent symbolism in this terminology: NATO as not only an alliance, but as the Alliance. An ‘alliance’, for our purposes, can be defined as a treaty-bound group of states that applies military means to security problems.6 Buzan et al. argue that ‘any analysis of security in Europe must take into account not only the military, but also the nonmilitary dimensions of the situation’.7 Military strategy itself can be defined as the way in which military means are deployed for political ends. NATO’s military means are plain to see, but if we wish to understand the Alliance, we must perforce understand the ends for which it was created, and we should not necessarily expect the ends to be solely military in nature. An analysis of each enlargement ought therefore to start with an examination of the security problems, broadly defined, that generated and affected each expansion, without focusing solely on the military problems that pertained at the time. We would then need to assess how the prospective new member fitted in with the solution to those problems. NATO’s external context was complex, and displayed a number of different facets. This is examined in Chapter 1, which argues that we ought to examine NATO enlargement in the light of these external factors: the confrontation with the Soviet Union, the underlying problems of European security, and the programme of recovery and integration. Allies might therefore display three characteristics. In the first place, they are likely to be states who shared a common ideological selfdefinition in their domestic political and economic life, and thus would regard the Soviet Union as axiomatically hostile. Second, they would probably be keen to reconstruct European order between themselves in order to avoid the disequilibrium of the past; moreover, the ideological dimension to the systemic conflict meant that ideas about order were in part ideologically-driven. And third, they would share some common geostrategic concerns, regardless of their ideologies. The first question we should ask in this section should be: how important was a direct military threat from the Soviet Union in the enlargement? This addresses the issue traditionally thought to be the primary one in alliance formation and duration. Secondly, to what extent was

4 Introduction

the enlargement agenda created by the geostrategic confrontation with the Soviet Union? Taken together, these should help us understand the relationship between this enlargement and the Cold War. In other words, was the Cold War creating the agenda for enlargement? This is of particular relevance for Germany, but will also shed light on underlying concepts of European order. To further probe this, we should ask what was the relationship of the new member to the post-war political– economic project in West Europe, and did joining NATO occur concurrently with political–economic integration? However, NATO is, as Paul Cornish points out, an alliance of choice: a new member has to wish to join the Alliance.8 Therefore, we should examine the approach of the prospective member: why did the new state wish to join the Alliance, and did these reasons correspond with the reasons of the Alliance? This will enable us to understand how NATO appears to a non-member – as an anti-Soviet guarantee or as a part of the wider complex of relations within ‘the West’.

The intra-Alliance debate A decision about expansion is qualitatively different from other Alliance decisions in three ways. First, enlargement decisions have to be stimulated by something, in contrast to force-commitment debates. An organisation which demands material military contributions from its members, and which possesses a military strategy, is one in which debates about strategy, burden-sharing and contributions will be generic. In contrast, an enlargement decision during the Cold War was a historically specific decision. A second distinctive feature of enlargement decisions is their indivisibility. Decisions on the force commitments are liable to be affected by (a) existing force commitments and whether these are to be significantly increased or decreased; and (b) bargains and trade-offs. To put it another way, the US may argue that its allies need to raise force levels by, say, 5 per cent, whilst its allies claim they can manage only 2 per cent. After haggling they may be able to agree on 3 per cent. Enlargement, in contrast, is a simple question of ‘yes’ or ‘no’; it does not lend itself to bargaining (although we may well expect some spillover trade-offs: members opposed to an enlargement may give way in return for concessions elsewhere). Third, enlargement decisions are affected by domestic politics to a greater extent than other NATO decisions. Enlargement must be ratified by all member parliaments before the prospective member can accede

Introduction 5

to the North Atlantic Treaty. In other words, the enlargement decision is directly linked to the domestic political process, and for most members this process is a democratic one. Therefore the way the decision was reached will be instructive, and the first question to ask should be the source of the decision: how did this become an issue, and on whose initiative? In this way, we will be able to see how the question of whether to take on the new member became an issue for serious decision. Second, we ought to examine the contours of intra-Alliance debate, and thus ask how much consensus existed within the Alliance, and what was disconsensus focused on? In other words, was this largely a political or a military act for NATO members? Moreover, we must assess the extent to which NATO’s institutional machinery was utilised in the decision. As a part of this, we should also ask can the role of the US be described as catalytic, hegemonic or imperial? Nearly all analyses of NATO concur that the US is the pivotal member of NATO, but disagreement exists about the nature of this centrality. This question will help us to understand the importance of the US in enlargement of the Alliance. A catalytic role would be one in which the US played the role of instigator in enlargement; the US raised the issue within the Alliance, but did not exercise decisive influence over the outcome. Hegemonic and imperial roles both ascribe the US such a decisive influence, but with differing perspectives. Hegemony implies consent, and in this perspective, the influence of the US over an enlargement decision would be decisive by virtue of a tacit or explicit acknowledgement by the allies that this was simply the way in which the Alliance best functioned. An imperial role would view the decisive influence of the US as being driven by the imposition of its own views on the policies of its allies. When this is coupled with the question about Alliance consensus, we should then be able to grasp how much the US agenda has been shared by its allies, and how much the US has imposed those agendas. Moreover, this will be invaluable in forming a judgement on the argument that NATO is fundamentally a US device for the domination of its allies. A note about primary sources would be in order here. Since the purpose of this study is to explain a collective decision to expand, the best source would presumably be the records of NATO debates. The official records are not available, and so I have utilised the next best thing: the records held in British and US official archives. There are at least two problems which can be identified here, but neither is insurmountable. The first problem is a possible skewing towards middle-range

6 Introduction

decision-making, a focus on the intermediate-level bureaucrats rather than their political superiors. I would pose three responses to this: first, it was at the middle-range level that intra-Alliance consensus was forged and at which member views were put most explicitly. Second, the views of higher ranks are included, but only on those occasions when their views had a decisive effect on the outcome. And third, there has already been plentiful focus on leadership views and attitudes, leading to a valuable secondary literature that I have utilised. But it is surely true that an examination of the middle-range debates will also prove revealing, and as Beatrice Heuser argues: ‘nothing is better evidence than a dated and signed document laying out a decision-maker’s view at the time of the decision’.9 The second problem is that the English language sources used may lead to an Anglo–American bias in the analysis. To this charge I can respond only that I have done my best to be objective and discriminating in my use of sources. I have tried to obtain as wide and as balanced a view as possible, and have endeavoured to combine primary and secondary sources into a window onto the discussions that took place. On those occasions where I have concentrated upon the Anglo–American angle, it has been because this angle had a decisive effect upon the outcome of the debate.

The taxonomy of membership The above two sections will be used to develop a picture of the politics – internal and external – of each accession. They will then be drawn upon to put together an evaluation of the criteria on membership within the Alliance. We have seen that an analysis of external factors can help us ascertain the kind of problems that the Alliance addresses; internal ones will explain the relative importance of these problems, and the norms that operate within NATO. Taken together, these should help us to build up a picture of the taxonomy of membership within the Alliance. NATO is often criticised, particularly in the post-Cold War era, for being intrinsically a ‘them and us’ organisation: the aim here is to probe the make-up of this ‘us’. An alliance, whatever its type, defines its members’ relations to each other and presupposes a common purpose or objective. An assessment of the taxonomy or criteria of NATO membership will help us to understand how Alliance members defined themselves and their purpose/objective. To put it another way: who is an ally for NATO members, and how are allies recognised? Three possible interpretations stand out: geography, strategy and politics. All

Introduction 7

three are derived from the fact that our subject of analysis is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The first possible articulation is a geographical one. Beatrice Heuser argues that ‘territory – and how to protect it – is the key to understanding the development of military alliances during the Cold War’, and territorial defence is the explicitly stated purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty.10 Thus a ‘North Atlantic’ state can be defined, in its most obvious articulation, as a state that is located within the North Atlantic area. The external factors referred to above have clear regional implications, and thus it is to be expected that geographical proximity will play a prominent part in security calculations. However, clarity of boundaries is not necessarily an unproblematic advantage: strategic and political boundaries are not as easily drawn as geographical ones, and NATO membership clearly shows the influence of other factors. This can be seen both in exclusions (Spain until 1982) and inclusions (Italy, Greece and Turkey, none of which count as geographically North Atlantic states). The second articulation of the term ‘North Atlantic’ is the strategic one. NATO, as an international military alliance designed with systemic security problems in mind, is bound to be subject to geostrategic necessities. We can see the influence of strategic imperatives in the membership of the North Atlantic ‘steppingstone’ countries: Iceland, Portugal, Denmark and Norway. Without these states, the implementation of the US military guarantee would have been markedly more problematic. The strategic concept of the North Atlantic is closely tied to geography, but has the added factor of military reasoning. It is therefore more concerned with a particular task. However, strategic qualifications, like geographical ones, were clearly not always sufficient to gain membership to NATO. The omission of Spain, a vital strategic point in both the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, was a glaring anomaly in a strategic conception of the North Atlantic. The third and final criterion is that of political qualifications: NATO as an organisation of liberal democracies. This defines the North Atlantic as a political community of basically like-minded states, and therefore returns to the above point that the reconstitution of European order was not a non-ideological exercise.11 Such an articulation has a stronger air of longevity than strategy, for two reasons. First, ideological ties may be less subject to the shifting pressures of geopolitics. Secondly, the political definition places NATO firmly in the context of a much wider web of relations and transactions, and thus as being sustained by more than East–West confrontation.

8 Introduction

Our interest here is, first, to assess which of these articulations of the ‘North Atlantic’ Alliance were uppermost, and to what extent was this relative importance a product of the external context – did the external context define the relative importance? Our second concern, related to this, is whether the criteria were intrinsic or immediate. This is intended to establish how far NATO enlargement criteria are historically contingent, or whether certain factors always apply. For example, how important was it that the new member was a democracy, and to what extent did this rise and fall according to circumstances? Has NATO ever admitted a state because it was a democracy? In summary, this will be an enquiry into the politics and dynamics of NATO enlargement during the Cold War, and Chapters 2–5 will examine each case in turn. By examining the role of, and interplay between, external context and intra-Alliance politics, we will draw up a picture of who is ‘one of us’ in the Alliance, and of how and why they have become ‘one of us’. When this is complete, we will then be in a position to put forward some conclusions on the nature of NATO and its relationship to the Cold War. In Chapter 1, the creation of NATO, and the historical backdrop to it, is examined. There are two reasons for beginning here. In the first place, the aim of the study is to explain the phenomenon of NATO enlargement, and as such is concerned with the role(s) of the Alliance and the ties that bind its members. It is therefore important to begin with an analysis of NATO’s origins in 1948–9. Chapter 2 looks at the membership issue during NATO’s inception. Only seven of NATO’s twelve founding members were involved in drawing up the North Atlantic Treaty. The other five were invited to accede only after the seven had agreed on the shape of the Treaty and which other states to invite. It is argued in the chapter that this process, while not formal enlargement of the type that was to follow, can nevertheless be considered to be expansion of a kind. This is true in the sense that (a) consensus was required before the new signatories were invited; and (b) the parameters of the debates were very similar to those of the formal accession. This is followed by a case-by-case analysis of each instance of enlargement. Chapter 3 examines the enlargement to Greece and Turkey in 1952, and the very particular historical circumstances that drove the accession. Neither of these two states was conceived as potential NATO members when the Alliance was set up, and the roots of this accession are therefore to be found after 1949. By contrast, the Federal Republic of Germany was a generic problem of European security, one with systemic implications. The accession of Germany is examined in Chapter

Introduction 9

4. The final case, that of Spain in 1982, is the subject of Chapter 5. This accession, while foreseen from NATO’s earliest days, had to wait until the Alliance was over 30 years old before it could be allowed to happen. The final conclusions put forward an answer to the central question: how are we to explain NATO enlargement during the Cold War?

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1 The North Atlantic Treaty in Context

The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 was the culmination of negotiations that stretched back more than a year to the Anglo–American–Canadian talks at the Pentagon in March 1948, and of a wider process of polarisation in Europe that had been in progress for somewhat longer. In fact, the concept of an Atlantic security system had been raised in Anglo–American circles as early as November 1940, and gathered force as wartime plans for the post-war system were drawn up during 1943–5.1 The Treaty formalised this polarisation in emphatic terms: it explicitly compelled its signatories to consult each other whenever the territorial or political integrity of one of their number was threatened, to regard an actual attack on a member as an attack on all of them and to collectively develop their joint capacity to resist such an attack. Thus the North Atlantic Treaty represented a long-term multilateral apparatus for coordinating defence policy, even if it lacked any tangible institutional manifestation of this character during the first months of its existence. The original signatories numbered 12 states: the US, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal and Italy, but only the first seven of these actually drew up the Treaty itself. The latter five – the Scandinavian states, Portugal and Italy – were invited to join when, and only when, the founding seven had agreed on the basic form of the Treaty and on which other states were to be invited. Debates on membership were a prominent feature of the Treaty negotiations; moreover these debates go to the heart of the aims of the North Atlantic Treaty and the ties that drew its members together. It can further be argued that this debate among the negotiating parties represents the first instance of NATO enlargement, if we define ‘enlarge11

12


ment’ as formal accession to the North Atlantic Treaty. There was little question that the original seven would be involved in the Treaty as it was negotiated, but there was also a clear sense that the pact would be politically and/or militarily incomplete without other members. Therefore they debated and negotiated about which other states would enhance the treaty, and in what way, before reaching agreement on which states to invite: in short, they made a collective decision to expand their number. These debates can help us understand NATO in much the same way as the formal accessions that came later. It is important to stress, however, that the internal debate between the founders was unlike any of the debates that are examined in the rest of this study. These negotiations took place between future allies, not members of an existing organisation. Each had individual conceptions of what the planned alliance was for, and had an unrivalled opportunity to shape the alliance via membership. However, it is important to place the North Atlantic Treaty in its proper historical context as a European security organisation. Before examining the nature of European order and the type of security problems that NATO addressed, it is necessary to clarify our terms. For the purposes of this study, the terms ‘system’ and ‘order’ are taken to mean something more than simply interacting units. Hollis and Smith note the view that an international system exists ‘if and only if there is enough of a set of rules (explicit, tacit or even latent) which international actors share and follow’.2 Ian Clark also notes that the concept of order is not ‘normatively neutral’, but embodies ‘certain value preferences’. Within this study, therefore, the terms ‘order’ and ‘system’ refer to the ‘mechanisms devised, and certain norms of behaviour developed, in an effort to manage the relations between states’.3

Continuity and change in European security 1945 represents a watershed in the history of the European state system. This system had been in a state of crisis since at least 1914, as its foundational principles proved increasingly unworkable. Two distinguishing characteristics of this system stand out: first, the special role, assigned to those states defined by contemporary standards as great powers, for maintaining the status quo (i.e. the system of sovereign states).4 This was done by the existence of a structure of agreed rules and norms: the great powers were themselves responsible for maintaining the system, and a general, if tacit, agreement existed that changes to this status quo should not be made unilaterally.

The North Atlantic Treaty 13

Second, no single power could, by itself, dominate the European system and establish itself as a hegemon. No single state could overthrow the system if all the other states in Europe, or even a sufficient number, were ranged against it. This was done by a system of shifting alliances whose membership was determined largely by the desire to maintain the stability and continued existence of the status quo.5 These two features were fundamental to the maintenance of the status quo in Europe, but themselves necessitated three preconditions: first, war should be limited in scope and acceptable in its costs. The limited destructive capacity – military and economic – of war during the nineteenth century (at least in comparison to what had gone before the Treaty of Westphalia, and what was to come in the twentieth century) meant that the collapse of non-military stabilising norms did not necessitate a corresponding collapse of the system itself. A war of balance between the shifting alliance patterns could be limited in scope and, to a greater or lesser extent, profitable for the winner. The politically, economically, socially and militarily debilitating effects of total war would not emerge until the twentieth century, when unprecedented effects were wrought on domestic and international structure in Europe, in terms both of the immediate effects of the war and the social changes brought about by the mobilisation of societies.6 Therefore, the post-war military–political climate was heavily influenced by this experience; specifically, war demanded a high degree of internal state cohesion and similar international cohesion in alliances. In other words, modern war in Europe had a universalising tendency: it was difficult to limit in terms of its geographical spread, and therefore remaining neutral if conflict did begin was a markedly less realistic option. As a consequence, it was likely that post-1945 alliances would be qualitatively different from the traditional European model. Their membership might be driven not only by specific conflicts, but also by a broader sense of a common fate if war should come. Secondly, the system was an essentially competitive one, characterised by unilateral sources of security and economic clout – i.e. by imperialism and industrialisation. In such a system, the relative capacity of states vis-à-vis each other needs to be stable and roughly equal.7 The rise of the German state after its unification in 1871 made this increasingly problematic. The ‘German Question’, in essence, is a question of the place and role of German foreign policy in a European system, and also a question of the type of system within which Germany exists. The experiences of the twentieth century made it abundantly clear that this facet

14


of the European security order – the unfeasibility of dominance – was now problematic if not moribund. Thirdly, the system was predicated on the desirability of the status quo to its key members. Balance and stability are always in someone’s favour: they are never apolitical.8 The rise of Germany, and later the Soviet Union, again made this problematic: those elements by which order was perpetuated – relative capacities and competitive alliances – had shifted away from those states favouring the status quo towards those who wanted to change it. The classical system worked, then, owing to structural and material stability, and what DePorte describes as ‘a kind of international ethic of self-restraint’, under which a bid for hegemony was seen as a threat to a satisfactory system, and thus as something to be prevented.9 By the mid-twentieth century this order was suffering from long-term structural problems, at the root of which was a conflict between these two imperatives of unit persistence and survival of the status quo: the survival and status of the key states, or key state of Germany, meant that the status quo was no longer acceptable to one of its principal units. The key weaknesses were therefore ‘the partial erosion of the legitimacy of war’, and the fact that the balance could no longer be selfcontained.10 The long-term roots of NATO as a political concept lie in the realisation that the parameters of European security had expanded beyond the core region of Western Europe. In short, 1945 was a watershed but not a year zero.11

‘The curse of bipolarity’ and the idea of a Soviet threat12 One more factor impacted onto the post-war international context in Europe: the conflict that became the defining characteristic of post-war European security – the Cold War. In fact, the break-up of the European order was of critical significance in the origins of the Cold War itself, because its collapse permitted the imposition of overlay by the two superpowers.13 ‘Overlay’ can be defined as ‘when great power interests dominate a region so heavily that the local pattern of security ceases to operate’.14 In the case of West Europe, these local patterns had in fact collapsed over a long period, and overlay can therefore be seen as a succession to the classical system, rather than an imposition upon it. In Wallace’s words, what was required was ‘a tighter framework of rules to govern international relations among the reviving national governments of Western Europe’. This was in significant part an intra-West process: ‘[t]he Atlantic Alliance and the economic organisations which


accompanied it imposed a looser structure of rules about economic and political behaviour.’15 In the immediate aftermath of the War, the US and the Soviet Union, the only two states with the capacity to implement their ideas on the organisation of international life, found themselves dominating half of Europe each, but with little or no common ground between the types of system they deemed necessary for order. Both shared a common distrust of the dynamics of traditional European security. However, while the US saw the inter-war period through the lens of pluralism, capitalism and Wilsonianism, the Soviet Union looked through the prism of Marxism–Leninism and traditional Russian suspicion of the West. Anton DePorte argues that ‘both the United States and the Soviet Union approached the post-war world with distinctive ideas about how to organise it. Both found ready to hand . . . an ideological framework for their own policies and an ideological rivalry between them’.16 Moreover, they were both in a position to exert unprecedented influence over the construction of such an order.17 The first half of the twentieth century had seen ideologies – especially Marxism and fascist totalitarianism – emerge as major political forces.18 The reconstruction both of the state and of the ruined European economic system necessitated the reconstruction of the industrialised economic base; moreover, the societal nature of total war also necessitated the mobilisation of this same industrial base. War and peace thus both hinged on industrialisation and socio–political cohesion. This is the connection between bloc logic, order and ideology: Stalin said as much when he pointed out that ‘this war is not as in the past. Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system.’19 The political structures created in the liberated states of Europe largely matched those of the armies that occupied it: the logic of spheres became inextricably linked to the character of governments.20 The sources of the Soviet threat as it was perceived in the West are here.21 Western Europe was now faced with the prospect of reconstruction in the presence of a nascent superpower with irreconcilably hostile views on domestic social systems and international order. The priorities were to avoid the economic and political fragmentation of the 1930s: this need to hang together took on an added urgency in the face of rapidly deteriorating relations with the giant neighbour to the East. In the socio–economic and political turmoil in Europe after 1945, the process of recovery was almost certain to be fragile in its early stages since it required at least transition from a war economy (e.g. Britain) and at most comprehensive political, economic and institutional rebirth

16


(e.g. France and Germany). Cohesion and consensus were thus of the utmost importance: lack of cohesion and disintegrating consensus became more of a possibility in the presence of the Soviet Union. George Kennan, a key architect of post-war US foreign policy, commented on this: he argued that the political, economic and social destruction inflicted by the war, rather than communism, was the real threat to European stability.22 Hunt notes two strands to the Cold War ideology of the US. One was a belief that ‘the possibilities for a peaceful and free international order depended on the internal constitutions of the states making up the world community’, while the other was a recognition that economic change ‘had so narrowed the gap between nations that developments half a world away could, as never before, vitally affect national security’. For our purposes, this denotes a strong interest in the path of European recovery and an acute awareness of the vulnerability of the US if that path should be an unfavourable one.23 Therefore, the potential effect of the Soviet Union on post-war reconstruction was an increasing concern. The US view of its erstwhile ally is classically encapsulated in Kennan’s famous ‘Long Telegram’, and the subsequent anonymously published ‘X’ article. It should also be noted that Kennan’s opposite number at the British Embassy in Moscow, Frank Roberts, penned a strikingly similar series of telegrams to his own superiors in London. Roberts argued that, before 1945, Britain and Russia had always been drawn together during systemic crises in Europe, in spite of their differences: the First and Second World Wars were evidence of this. However, this could no longer be relied upon in the post-war era. These reports were as influential in London as Kennan’s were in Washington.24 In his ‘X’ article, Kennan argued that the political action of the Soviet Union was rooted both in traditional Russian policies and in the more ideological ground of Marxism–Leninism, and ‘moves inexorably along the prescribed path . . . stopping only when it meets with some unanswerable force’. This political action was likened to ‘a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal’. Kennan then drew on this sinister picture to advocate a policy by which this could be countered: ‘the main element of any United States policy towards the Soviet Union must be that of a longterm, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies’.25 This picture of the Soviet Union as a political force constantly probing for points of weakness added a new urgency to the US desire for international cohesion; the US, like its allies, was heavily conscious of the


consequences of the 1930s. The interpretation put on this experience was that piecemeal fragmentation was inherently dangerous and thus security and cohesion of state relations became of paramount importance. NATO’s role in this, then, is of a psychological mutual reassurance pact: a binding pledge backed by the nuclear guarantee. Osgood argues that ‘NATO was not created to deter an imminent attack on Europe. Like Russia’s huge army, it was intended to provide political and psychological reinforcement in the continuing political warfare of the Cold War’; the decision-makers of the period were convinced that Europe ‘could not simultaneously recover their economic and political stability and build the military strength they needed to withstand Soviet pressure unless they received American military support in a showdown’.26 Baylis also underlines the way the Soviet threat was perceived: It seems unlikely with hindsight that the Soviet Union had any intention of invading Western Europe . . . [The] primary objective in organising Western defence was to provide the necessary selfconfidence for Western European states who genuinely believed that they were threatened with subversion. Such self-confidence was necessary to allow them to rebuild their political, social and economic structures after the traumas and devastation of the war.27 Thus the security problems of West Europe were both immediate (the perceived threat from the Soviet Union) and intrinsic (the systemic problems of European security).28 Both had vital and potentially grave implications for post-war recovery and the West European project that developed from it. Recent NATO historiography has similarly offered a more variegated view of the functions and underpinnings of the Alliance, particularly as archival sources in Britain and the US have opened up. If the Soviet threat was defined in political terms, then it is logical to suppose that the key security concern in Western Europe was order, and several accounts have highlighted the implications of this. Timothy Ireland argues that the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty ‘forged an alliance structure responsive to European security in its most general sense’. In this perspective, NATO was as much about reconstituting the European security system as it was about waging Cold War.29 Ireland, and others, proceed from this assumption to point to the German Question as another prime force in the formation of the Alliance, albeit one sometimes obscured by the looming confrontation of the Cold War. This reading of NATO is, as Dockrill notes, part of a

18


wider reappraisal of post-war Western policy which has produced a consensus that ‘the Cold War was not the sole explanation for the course which Western policy followed after 1945’.30

The origins of the North Atlantic Treaty It is generally agreed that the first real signs of the North Atlantic Treaty are to be found in the collapse of the Council of Foreign Ministers meetings in December 1947.31 The meeting broke up over the issue of Germany, and it was here that the cleavage in the wartime alliance became final: after the breakdown, the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin told the US Secretary of State George Marshall ‘there is no chance that the Soviet Union will deal with the West on any reasonable terms in the foreseeable future. The salvation of the West depends on the formation of some form of union, formal or informal in character, in Western Europe backed by the United States and the Dominions.’32 That telling phrase ‘the foreseeable future’ is indicative of the way Bevin’s thoughts were moving, and in fact it was Bevin who publicly set the ball rolling within a few weeks of the break-up of the Council meeting. This came with his famous Commons speech of 22 January 1948 which urged ‘the free nations of Western Europe to draw together’, in the face of political warfare with the Soviet Union.33 Bevin identified two threats: ‘the strategic threat involved in the Russian sphere of influence, and the political threat to destroy all efforts to build up a Western Union’. The two were to mingle in the North Atlantic Treaty, which was to comprise states of strategic importance, and states more intimately involved in the Western Union concept, which Bevin described as ‘a sort of spiritual federation of the West’.34 For the present, the idea was to discuss the plan with a core group comprising Britain, France and the Benelux states, although Bevin foresaw the membership expanding to include Scandinavia, Greece, possibly Portugal and eventually Spain and Germany, ‘without whom no Western system could be complete’.35 It is generally agreed that the beginnings of the North Atlantic Treaty lie in Bevin’s Western Union initiative.36 However, Bevin’s speech was sandwiched between two formal treaties, those of Dunkirk and Brussels, which predate the Alliance. We ought therefore to see the initiative as part of a developing process in Western Europe. The first embryonic signs of the Western Union concept can in fact be seen in the Anglo–French Dunkirk Treaty, signed a year before Bevin’s speech.37 The Treaty was very much a product of its time. It came on


the cusp of the collapse of Allied post-war cooperation and the arrival of the Cold War, and therefore has a certain schizophrenic character.38 Its anti-German clause was an understandable response from two states that had fought two long and highly destructive wars against Germany, neither of which could have been won without external help. However, it was also an important first step in long-term security cooperation between the two key states in West Europe. Its immediate successor, the Brussels Treaty, retained the formal antiGerman clause, but was much more closely related to the North Atlantic Treaty in terms of its wider purpose. In the first place, the Brussels Pact was a multilateral treaty, in contrast to the bilateral treaties that had largely been the pre-war European model. Second, the Treaty contained an expansion clause, Article 9, which allowed invitations to be extended to other states. And third, Germany was mentioned in the text, but the overall pact did not possess quite the same anti-German air as the Dunkirk Treaty. The Benelux states in particular were unhappy with the anti-German character of the Dunkirk Treaty, and were opposed to drawing up the Brussels Pact on similar lines. This was largely due to a practical awareness that German recovery was vital to the future of the European economy. The US was also unhappy with the antiGerman emphasis of the Brussels Pact. Like Belgium and the Netherlands, Washington felt that ‘ultimately, Germany will have to be brought into association with the other Western countries, and their manpower used if Europe is going to be saved. Therefore, we think it is a very bad idea to direct this treaty of the Brussels Pact powers against a probable future ally.’39 In fact, considerable disagreement exists over the basic purpose of the Brussels Treaty, although there is consensus that its security agenda went further than its anti-German clause. For some, it was little more than a means to the wider end of an Atlantic Alliance that would include the US.40 US officials and diplomats had made it clear that the West European states would have to demonstrate an ability and willingness to make efforts of their own before the US would feel able to commit itself. John D. Hickerson, probably the most enthusiastic US proponent of an Atlantic Pact, was very clear: ‘Every proof that the free states of Western Europe could give that they were resolved and able to stand on their own two feet’ would increase the chances of US involvement.41 Britain was particularly conscious of this; one diplomat, for example, stressed to Schuman of France that ‘the United States, like God, helped those who helped themselves’.42 The paradox, in Bevin’s words, was that

20


‘Western Europe cannot yet stand on its own two feet without assurance of support’.43 For this reason, the Brussels Pact is sometimes seen as simply ‘a sprat to catch a whale’, a demonstration of commitment but little more.44 It is true that such a demonstration was necessary to help win over residual isolationism in the US, a task that would have been even more difficult without some indication that the US would not be signing any blank cheques in European security. It is similarly the case that the Brussels Pact states were fully aware of this necessity. However, the nature of US involvement was not yet fully agreed upon, either in Europe or in the US. There was an entangling of two threads here – the European and Atlanticist threads – that persists to this day. The Atlanticist concept placed the Brussels Treaty more in the context of a broader Atlantic partnership, whilst the Europeanist strand defined the Atlantic partnership as a way to make European recovery, and later integration, work effectively.45 Thus the Treaty, like that of Dunkirk, possessed a somewhat schizophrenic character. Despite these differences, by March 1948 a consensus had emerged within Europe on the perceived threat, and a second set of negotiations in Washington pointed to a similar perspective in the US. These negotiations, known as the Pentagon Talks, produced a paper that set out the basic contours of the North Atlantic Treaty.46 Two aspects are worthy of note for our purposes. First, the US occupied an ambiguous role in the recommendations. The Pentagon Paper envisaged ‘a collective Defense Agreement for the North Atlantic Area’ in which the Brussels Treaty would be underwritten by ‘a declaration of American intention . . . to consider an armed attack in the North Atlantic Area against a signatory of the Five Power Treaty as an armed attack against the United States to be dealt with by the United States in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter’. The Declaration would state that the US would be ‘disposed to extend similar support to any other free democracy in Western Europe which acceded to the Five Power Treaty’.47 This meant that the North Atlantic Treaty was envisaged as a formal arrangement between the US and the Brussels Treaty states, in which the Brussels Pact itself would be guaranteed by the US. There was no mention of the US or Canada joining either the Brussels Pact, or of a separate treaty (such as the one that eventually emerged) being set up.48 Second, the envisaged membership of the pact is worth noting. The recommendation in the Pentagon Paper was that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Italy should be invited to accede to the Brussels


Treaty. However, the envisaged ‘Defense Agreement’ would include Ireland and Portugal, as well as the Brussels Treaty states plus the US and Canada. In the light of the Paper’s statement on ‘any other free democracy’ being invited to join the Brussels Treaty, it is easy to see why Portugal could be included in the North Atlantic Pact but not the Brussels Pact. Salazar’s regime in Portugal hardly qualified under the term ‘democracy’, and thus there would have been little chance of Portuguese inclusion in the Brussels Pact, with its clear ideological overtones. Despite this, Portugal’s geostrategic position and its control of the strategically important Azores Islands made it hard to overlook when drawing up an Atlantic military system. This conflict between strategic imperatives and political–ideological considerations was to characterise membership debates in the Treaty negotiations. Moreover, Italy was not an Atlantic state like Portugal, but was envisaged as a member of the Brussels Pact, as a Western European democracy. And Spain was strategically important for similar reasons to Portugal, but was deliberately not included anywhere owing to its domestic regime.49 These ambiguities in the Paper are important because of what they reveal. First, they show an unresolved ambiguity surrounding the exact relationship between the North Atlantic Defence Agreement and the Brussels Treaty. Clearly, it would be more than simply a way to hook up the US and Canada with the Brussels Treaty, since Ireland and Portugal would occupy some unspecified hinterland between the transatlantic states and the Brussels Treaty. At the same time, there was no mention of the US actually signing any treaty. Second, it was not clear whether Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Italy would actually want to join the Brussels Treaty.50 In the case of Sweden, it was accepted that the answer would be a refusal to join either pact; in the case of Norway and Iceland the preference might be to join the North Atlantic agreement but not the Brussels Treaty. Third, none of the other Brussels Treaty states had actually been consulted about their own thoughts on membership; the Pentagon Talks were strictly an Anglo–American– Canadian affair.51 The differing views on the purpose of the Brussels Treaty meant that the other states – France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – were likely to have their own ideas about the states to be admitted and the relationship of the Brussels Treaty to the new agreement. In short, there was a great deal to be discussed between the Pentagon conferees, and considerably more between them and the other Brussels Treaty states. To review the story thus far, international structural pressures were pushing West European states together as they attempted to recover

22


from the experience of war. The antecedents to the North Atlantic Treaty display the shifting nature of the perceived threat, as concern about a revived Germany gave way to the more immediate problems posed by the Soviet Union and the Cold War. This provides some of the best evidence that the core security concerns in West Europe centred on the prospects for stable reconstruction, but were not aimed at any single source. Therefore, we can state that the Soviet Union’s potential threat, like that of Germany, lay more in its systemic political effects than in direct military danger. The problem of balancing power remained at the heart of European security, and the question was over whose power was to be balanced.

2 The Membership Question and Neo-Enlargement, 1948–9

George Kennan, a prominent member of the State Department team that negotiated the North Atlantic Treaty (and a long-standing critic of NATO), has remarked that one of the most difficult parts of treaty negotiations is not who to include but who to exclude: who is to be left out, and on what grounds?1 Kennan reasoned, with consistency but with little success, that a North Atlantic Treaty should be strictly geographical in membership and thus composed only of states ‘whose shores were washed by the waters of the North Atlantic’. This would have the advantages of (a) being clearly a defensive pact and therefore not likely to provoke the Soviet Union into a sort of competition for allies; and (b) possessing solidly delineated membership criteria and therefore not subject to grey areas (it would not, for example, include Italy, Greece or Turkey). Kennan argued that: A particularly unfortunate effect of going beyond the North Atlantic area would be that we would thereby raise for every country in Europe the question: to belong or not to belong . . . If individual countries rejected membership or were refused membership, the Russians could make political capital out of this, either way.2 The problem was that geographical criteria could not realistically be applied as strictly as Kennan advised, principally because the term ‘North Atlantic’ was not articulated in solely geographical terms. The tension between tight criteria (and geography was the only genuinely tight criterion) and political–strategic reasoning met in the case of Italy. This was the clearest departure from the geographic criterion, and is examined later. Moreover, different parties to the Treaty negotiations brought differing strategic perspectives and priorities to the negotiating table. 23

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Negotiating the Treaty The Pentagon Paper had clearly shown that the US was not yet ready to become a full signatory to the pact in the way that was eventually the case. It was, however, prepared to offer a guarantee. In this sense the US shared a common strategic vision with Britain. Like Britain, it was interested in establishing political–economic stability in West Europe, and it recognised the need for the military threat to be offset as a necessary aspect of tackling the political threat. Both aspects of the threat were deemed important in terms of their effect on the longterm recovery of the European economy and political system. In this way the Marshall Aid plan and the North Atlantic Treaty were closely linked in what they were designed to achieve in US eyes. Britain held similar views, and was keenly aware of the weakness of the Brussels Pact alone. Thus a structure that would restore balance and stability to West Europe (preferably with a small military commitment by Britain) was the aim.3 For France and the Benelux states, geography dictated a keener sensitivity to the military aspect of the threat than in Britain. France’s overwhelming priority in the early stages of negotiations was therefore to secure immediate US military aid with which to build up French defences. In January 1948, France had warned the US of the French ‘psychosis’ that the US would not defend France in the event of an attack, and Bidault made this clear at a conference in July of the same year: The French government assigns only relative importance to the formal aspect of the planned guarantees. It is instead extremely interested in the concrete means of defence that will be put at our disposal . . . This Atlantic Pact of which we are speaking is a mythological animal, a unicorn. Belgium and the Netherlands occupied a middle ground between the two key European powers. Belgium, like France, placed the priority of immediate US military aid above that of a treaty, whilst the Dutch tended to lean more towards the British model of a deeper US treaty engagement. Wiebes and Zeeman note that neither Belgium nor the Netherlands were in a position to significantly affect the course of negotiations and therefore tended to fall in behind a larger power.4 There was a clear understanding that security needs could not be properly addressed without a transatlantic connection, but clear differences of nuance in how this connection was to be established and the

The Membership Question, 1948–9 25

priorities inherent in the connection. In short, all were agreed that a stronger US commitment to West Europe was an urgent requirement, and differences were more concerned with form than with purpose. Form affects inclusion: ideas about which states were to be included are necessarily bound to ideas about the form of treaty being created. Membership was therefore a key issue in negotiations for the North Atlantic Treaty, which took place from July 1948 to March 1949. These talks were held under the heading ‘Washington Exploratory Talks on Security’ (WET), an ambiguous title that further underlines the uncertainty concerning the exact outcome. The formal setting of the negotiations is significant, and shows the origins of ‘the NATO method’, which was later embodied in the institutionalisation of the Alliance.5 Consensus had to be reached without formal voting at the Treaty negotiations, and negotiating on a two-tier basis facilitated this. At one level were the formal WET negotiations between ambassadorial staff in regular contact with their governments. This was the main venue at which national positions were put forward, and while this was the traditional method of negotiating treaties, it did present certain problems. Sydney Snyder argues that the representatives at this level were circumscribed by the need to always refer back to their governments for advice.6 Below this level, however, was a Working Group made up of middle-echelon diplomats who had more room for manoeuvre. Because they were not the official negotiators, they were able to interact with a much greater degree of independence and imagination. The Washington Paper (see below) and the draft North Atlantic Treaty itself were both drawn up by the Working Group.7 It was at this level that many of the key points of the Treaty were thrashed out. Danchev sums up the benefits of this: The members of the Working Party, especially the Americans, the British and the Canadians, who dominated every forum of the negotiations, were exceptionally uninhibited in their exchanges. Constructive indiscipline was the order of the day, and it is evident that this freethinking atmosphere . . . was both liberating and efficient.8 Two Articles in the Treaty should underline this point. Article 2 outlines economic and social cooperation between signatories: this was largely a Canadian proposal, drawn from the shared political institutions in the core group of NATO members. Article 8, under which the signatories undertook ‘not to enter into any international engagement in conflict

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with this Treaty’, also emphasises the political character of NATO members. The original proposal for this also came from Canada, who wanted an expulsion clause written into the Treaty against any NATO member that ‘turned Communist’ or adopted policies ‘inconsistent’ with the principles of the North Atlantic Treaty. The US was in broad accord with this, but wording such a clause proved troublesome. Defining when a state had ‘turned Communist’ was easier to talk about than it was to write into the Treaty. It was also pointed out that ‘the first act of any country going Communist would be to pull out of the pact on Moscow’s orders’. Moreover, such a clause could easily be seen as an indication of ‘doubts about the political stability of certain of the participants’ in the Pact, and thereby could cause intra-alliance friction. The clause, therefore, was dropped on the grounds of being unwordable, unnecessary and politically undesirable.9

The membership issue The ‘Washington Paper’ of September 1948 set out the agreement reached so far, and recommended that Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Portugal and Ireland be included. This was justified on the grounds that the loss of these countries to an enemy ‘would jeopardise the security of both the European and the North American members and seriously impede the flow of reciprocal assistance between them’. The Paper also stressed the need to ‘strengthen the Western orientation’ of ‘other free European nations’, without any specific indication of which states were meant by this. Clues can however be found in the concept of membership: the Washington Paper recommended that the Pact would have three tiers of membership, each with a different set of mutual obligations. These three were described by Charles Bohlen of the State Department as ‘the hard core, the stepping stones, and the goats’, and the concept of concentric circles of commitment formed an important element in the North Atlantic Treaty as it was envisaged at this time.10 Before we examine the debates over which states to invite, therefore, it will be useful to examine this idea and the thinking behind it. The ‘hard core’ consisted of the negotiating parties at the WET talks – that is, the US, Canada and the Brussels Treaty states. This group shared common strategic and ideological concerns, and would form a close association that would be at the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty. An arrangement would then be formed between this group and the ‘stepping stones’: Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland and Portugal. The US stressed to its allies that ‘in any North Atlantic arrangement Canada


and the United States would constitute the North American anchorpoint and the parties to the Brussels Treaty the European anchorpoint’. Connecting these anchorpoints were the ‘stepping stones’ of Greenland (controlled by Denmark), Iceland, Ireland, Norway and Portugal (which controlled the Azores).11 It was recognised that they might not wish to take on the responsibilities of full membership, but their strategic positions made adherence a necessity. Thus, these states would receive a territorial guarantee and might have an option to join the main group if they wished, but would not take part in any advance military planning of the sort envisaged at the time. The final group, the ‘goats’, included Italy, Greece and Turkey. These states did not fit the term ‘North Atlantic’ in its geographical or strategic articulations, or (in the Greek and Turkish cases) its ideological ones, but were nonetheless of key importance to Western Europe. For this reason it was recommended that they did not join the pact but that a declaration be made to the effect that ‘a threat to [their] political or territorial integrity would require action by the full members’. This concept of graduated membership represents an attempt to resolve the exclusion problem highlighted by Kennan. However, as one diplomat pointed out, ‘the old difficulty of squaring ideological and strategic criteria for membership remains unresolved. I do not think there is any formula that can be consistently applied; we shall simply have to strike a balance of profit and loss in individual cases.’ This was, of course Kennan’s point when he argued that only geographical criteria would avoid having to reconcile the two criteria. The problem was that the pact was both a political and strategic alliance, and as such possessed blurred boundaries. The WET parties noted in August 1948 that, as well as common security concerns, they were also ‘linked by a common civilization and a common conception of life’. However, it was important that ‘any arrangement be so constituted as to leave no gaps which might compromise the security of the whole area, and should be as comprehensive as possible at the outset’. The problem was that filling these gaps meant including states that did not necessarily fit with the ‘common conception of life’.12 The plan for calibrated membership was an innovative and potentially fruitful way around the problem, recognising that the North Atlantic states possessed differing levels of connection with each other. Despite this, the idea did not make it into the final treaty, which had critical implications for later enlargements. The overriding problem was the inequality of obligations. The ‘stepping-stone’ states would receive a territorial guarantee, but themselves were required to do little more

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than defend their own territories if attacked, and provide their allies with unspecified facilities (probably military bases). Conversely, the ‘goats’ were associating themselves with the Treaty (and thereby making themselves belligerents in a future war) in return for little more than a vague promise of allied consultation if they should be attacked. In short, graduated membership meant either allied guarantees without member commitments, or member commitments without allied guarantees. As such it was, despite its advantages, an inherently flawed idea. By autumn 1948, two factors emerged which had decisive effect on the membership issue. First, the Pact would be a treaty in its own right, rather than the dumb-bell concept of a transatlantic guarantee to the Brussels Treaty. As such, it had its own distinctive membership criteria: the treaty had to be given practical meaning by the inclusion of the stepping-stone states. Moreover, the limited membership idea began to fall away after this point, as its political implications became apparent. This meant that membership became flattened down into a single type: full membership or no membership. This meant making difficult choices over states that existed on the blurred strategic and political boundaries of the North Atlantic. Second, the embryonic North Atlantic Treaty had acquired the support of its definitive member, the US. At the talks it had been noted that ‘it would probably make the difference between participation and non-participation’ for the stepping-stone countries if they knew the US would be included.13 Thus new signatories were not to be invited until the format of the treaty was agreed and the US clearly involved. Neither was clear until the latter part of 1948. Having taken the plunge, the US also took a much more proactive role in the negotiations, and the Treaty was more attractive to some prospective members as a result of the US presence. Moreover, the only remaining scepticism about the worth of a treaty, from France, had evaporated as it became clear that US military aid would only arrive via this vehicle.

Italy The case of Italy is the most striking of the 1949 invitations to join the Treaty, because it is such a clear geographical anomaly. That Italy was not seen as an obvious choice for membership is shown by the fact that the only consistent support came from Hickerson in the State Department, while the other negotiating parties all changed their position on Italy during the course of negotiations. Britain moved from support to equivocation to opposition to acquiescence; France moved from stub-


born opposition to equally stubborn support; the Benelux states and Canada wavered according to where consensus seemed to lie. The invitation to Italy was by no means made on a set of clear criteria, and so, before examining the contours of the debate, it would be useful to describe the arguments for and against. It should be borne in mind that the decision on Italy was as much to do with political bargaining as with the relative strength of the arguments. Escott Reid, an important participant in the WET talks, notes four reasons for the invitation to Italy: Hickerson wanted it; the French government believed that if it pressed for Italian membership it would strengthen its case for having the treaty pledge cover Algeria; the other governments did not give in early enough to the French insistence about Algeria; and Acheson succeeded Lovett as the principal United States negotiator.14 It can be seen here that only the first and last of these refer to any support for the case for Italian inclusion. Nonetheless, there was a case in Italy’s favour, which was made on political and strategic grounds. A paper submitted to the WET talks by the Working Group puts the case with clarity.15 The political case, which was arguably the stronger, possessed an internal and external element to it, and highlights the way in which the Soviet Union was defined as a threat. In domestic terms, it was argued that the exclusion of Italy would have a deleterious effect on the political orientation of Italy, which was still in a post-Fascist transitional phase. The political centre of gravity within the country had yet to become clear, and for this reason it was felt that to shut Italy out of a Western defence organisation could only strengthen the position of the Italian Left, particularly the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The Working Group paper noted that ‘non-inclusion would be a serious blow to the Italian Government . . . It might be easier for the Government of Italy to justify participation than to explain exclusion to its legislature and to the Italian people.’ Moreover, non-inclusion of Italy could, in these zero-sum times, be viewed as indicating a lack of interest in Italy on the part of the West, and thereby increase the chances of Soviet-sponsored subversion from the inside.16 The international dimension of the political case rested on similar foundations. There was some considerable support for a neutralist policy in Italy, hardly a surprising fact in the light of Italy’s recent experience

30


in the war. Just as exclusion was seen as a potential boost to the PCI, it could also strengthen this neutralist tendency over a wider political spectrum. This would have strategic implications, examined below, but might also jeopardise Italy’s Western European orientation. Moreover, the paper pointed out that ‘it would be illogical to exclude Italy from the Pact while encouraging efforts to integrate her more fully into the Western European economic organisation’. Here the link between the Western Union and the North Atlantic Treaty becomes clear: the paper argued that Italy was, by dint of ‘her civilisation and her mercantile and maritime traditions’ a Western European country. Thus, despite its geographical and strategic distance from the North Atlantic, Italy had a stronger political qualification for entry. This was not a universally held view. Varsori notes a lingering suspicion of Italy on the part of the British, who tended to regard Italy as one of ‘a group of second class nations which had no right, at least for the time being, to become members of the inner circle of the Western world’.17 The strategic case for Italian inclusion was derived largely from its importance to Western Europe and to the Mediterranean: Italy occupies a position of considerable strategic importance on the right wing of the defence of Western Europe. In case of conflict it would be essential to safeguard the southern flank as well as to guarantee the security of the southern route by which assistance from North America would in part be carried to Europe. The position of Italy is important to the operation of this route and it is otherwise important that Italy not be in enemy hands. It could be added here that these strategic advantages could be denied to the Treaty states if Italy should adopt a neutralist posture. The argument as it is expressed here is also significant in that it defines Italy as important to the Atlanticist strategy of North American assistance to West Europe, and thereby links Italy to the North Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean strategic theatres. However, the strategic relationship of Italy and the North Atlantic Treaty states was also the defining feature in the case against Italian inclusion. The case for exclusion rested largely on the grounds that Italy was not an Atlantic state in geographical – or, arguably, strategic – terms. Whilst it was undoubtedly strategically important to West Europe, this importance could be harnessed via either the Brussels Treaty or by a separate Mediterranean arrangement. This was, therefore, a basically functional question: it was not that Italy was not ‘one of us’ in the political –


cultural terms described above, but that the North Atlantic Treaty was not regarded as the vehicle by which this affiliation should be maintained. Moreover, there were practical considerations. If all members of the Treaty were to have a territorial guarantee, then it would be necessary for members to undertake to defend Italian territory in the event of a war. Military advisors in both Britain and the US, the two principal military powers in Europe at this time, were extremely dubious about the feasibility of doing this for some time to come. The alternatives, if Italy were to be invited, would be to overextend military capabilities to dangerous levels, or to admit that Italy could not be defended and thereby make a mockery of the territorial guarantee. The British Chiefs of Staff were particularly concerned about this problem, and this was their main objection to Italian inclusion in the Pact.18 Finally, including Italy would make it harder to logically exclude Greece and Turkey. At this point in NATO’s history, the admission of Greece and Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty was barely countenanced, but their adherence to the West was desired. This could conceivably be at risk if they were not granted the same status as Italy. This had been recognised for some time: it will be recalled that Italy, Greece and Turkey were viewed as a trio, the ‘goats’ referred to in the early idea for limited membership. Italian inclusion would make excluding Greece and Turkey more difficult, the problem being that the negotiators wanted Greek–Turkish adherence, but not membership.19 Thus, the pro-inclusion argument rested on both positive and negative grounds: positive in the sense that Italy was ‘one of us’ and negative in the sense that the consequences of exclusion would be grave. The exclusion case, on the other hand, was more rigidly strategic in nature, but was contingent upon the creation of a Mediterranean Pact. If such a defence treaty (which was not yet even a paper idea) could not be arranged, then it would be hard to see where Italy could be formally fitted into the Western system other than via the North Atlantic Treaty. This was especially true in the light of the West European doubts about immediate Italian inclusion in the Brussels Treaty. Secondly, the argument that Italy was not strategically a North Atlantic state was open to question. And thirdly, as the North Atlantic Treaty came to be conceived of more as a treaty in its own right than a link between the Brussels Pact and the US and Canada, then the possibility of excluding Italy became more remote, as the distinction between a West European state and a North Atlantic state became blurred. In the earlier discussion of the Pentagon Talks, it was noted that Italy

32


was included as an original member of the planned treaty. However, by the time the WET talks got under way four months later, the consensus had swung the other way, and Italian membership had few supporters at the early rounds of the talks. Certainly Britain and Canada had decided against it, and the US also appeared to be on the side of exclusion (with the exception of John Hickerson, an indefatigable supporter of Italian entry). The reason for this about-face on the part of the Pentagon conferees was a simple one: the Italian elections in April 1948. A – probably the – decisive factor at the Pentagon Talks was the fear of Soviet-inspired subversion in Italy. It had been agreed that ‘Italy, even more than Norway, is now directly menaced’, by the same forces that were presumed to have been at work in the Czech coup of February 1948.20 Thus, despite doubts, initially it was decided that Italy would have to be included if it was not to fall victim to the same fate as Czechoslovakia. Italy was almost certainly one of the states mentioned in the Pentagon Paper as requiring a strengthened ‘Western vocation’.21 However, the elections produced a comfortable majority for the Western-oriented Christian Democrats and, for Britain in particular, this promptly removed the decisive factor in favour of Italian inclusion. Martin Folly notes that British support, always reluctant, thereafter moved to ‘equivocation and then outright opposition’. This period of equivocation on Britain’s part lasted at least until September and possibly as late as November 1948. The success of the Christian Democrats in the elections was an important factor in pushing opinion towards opposition, but the deciding factor was the military assessment put forward by the British Chiefs of Staff. The CoS discussed the issue in September 1948, and viewed the question in the context of a pervasive sense of financial and materiel weakness in Britain’s military capabilities. In such an atmosphere, they concluded that the deciding criterion would have to be that Britain could only give guarantees to states considered crucial to national survival. From this point of view, Italy would be ‘a liability rather than an asset’. Thus Britain moved towards opposition through a mixture of pragmatism and a sense that the danger to Italy was ebbing if not past. Importantly, this decision was reached largely in the absence of any clear indications from the other negotiating parties about their own preferences. It should be noted that Britain was always ready to give way if it seemed that other states, and in particular the US, were in favour of Italian inclusion.22 The position of the US was unclear, reflecting divisions within the Washington bureaucracy and producing some contradictory signals. For


example, Smith notes that in November 1948 Lovett informed the other parties that the US had strong views on the initial inclusion of Italy in any North Atlantic pact, and then within a month stated that the US ‘had no firm position’ on Italy and would look to the European states to make a decision.23 As with most aspects of the North Atlantic Treaty, the divide was personified by Hickerson and Kennan. For Kennan, the geographical limits that he had argued for meant that Italy should not be included in a North Atlantic Pact. Like Britain, Kennan feared that Italian inclusion would make it difficult to exclude Greece and Turkey as well. Hickerson, in contrast, constantly lobbied for the inclusion of Italy, on the grounds that Italy was a natural, if not geographical, member of the North Atlantic Treaty. He claimed the support of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in this; unlike their British counterparts, the US JCS had concluded that on the whole Italy ‘would be a source of weakness if left out of the alliance’. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the US had already made a firm commitment to Italy in the form of NSC 1/2 of February 1949. This had been approved by the President, and stated that the US should make full use of its political, economic and if necessary military power in such manner as may be found most effective to assist in preventing Italy from falling under the domination of the USSR either through external armed attack or through Sovietdominated Communist movements within Italy.24 The US was therefore always committed to preserving Italy’s Western orientation, and it was thus more a question of whether the North Atlantic Treaty was a suitable instrument with which to accomplish this. In late 1948 the US was suggesting that Italian adherence to the Brussels Pact might resolve the problem of Greek–Turkish exclusion. Kennan put this to the Working Group in December, arguing that Italy would be eligible for full membership in the North Atlantic Pact if it adhered to the Brussels Pact, which Greece and Turkey could not do. In this way the danger of ‘an invitation to Italy which might seem invidious to the other Mediterranean states’ might be avoided.25 This also helps to explain why the US looked towards the Europeans for a decision on Italy: Kennan stated that the United States feels that Italy’s status in relation to the North Atlantic Pact depends upon its relationship to the Brussels Pact. Italy

34


would be eligible for full membership in the North Atlantic Pact if it adhered to the Brussels Treaty. Kennan’s statement clearly indicates that, for the US, it was necessary for Italy to subscribe to a West European vocation (rather than a Mediterranean one, for example) if it was to be eligible for NATO membership. Therefore, it was for the Brussels Treaty states to decide if they were willing to accept Italy on this basis.26 However, by this time the Brussels Pact states had already decided that Italy should not be included in their number. The Pact was still in its very early stages, and none of the parties – France included – wanted to add further members before the Pact machinery had had a chance to develop. Moreover, and more importantly, the defence of their own territory (given that the Brussels Treaty obliged its members to go to war if one was attacked) was difficult enough; the problems of defending Italy as well, particularly in light of the military limitations imposed by the peace treaty, would have been insoluble. By late 1948, then, the picture was becoming clear: Britain, Canada, France and the Benelux states were opposed, whilst the US wavered as its internal debate went on unresolved. However, between November 1948 and January 1949, the two clinching factors in Italy’s accession made themselves felt. These factors were the sudden and vociferous support of France, and a direct appeal for membership by the Italian government. The French volte-face was unexpected since, for much of the first round of talks, France had been opposed to the inclusion of any other states in the negotiations. This was due to two factors. First, France was initially sceptical about the whole concept of an Atlantic Pact as it seemed to be conceived in Washington, and preferred to limit the pact to the Brussels Treaty underwritten by the US and Canada. The French government reluctantly agreed to the inclusion of the ‘stepping-stone’ states as set out in the Washington Paper, but still opposed the immediate inclusion of Italy. Rather, it was suggested that Italy and ‘certain other states which might not be defined as being natural members of the North Atlantic community’ could be admitted later. Second, France’s overwhelming priority was to secure immediate military aid from the US to bolster the rearmament programme: this remained their leading priority at the WET talks, and in this context they were dubious about the overextension of US commitments in this regard.27 The change of heart on the part of the French government was driven by two key priorities.28 First, an important consideration for France in


the Treaty negotiations was the inclusion of Algeria, then a French colony, under the treaty’s guarantee. Armand Bérard, a French participant in the Washington talks, noted in his memoirs that originally France had wanted the whole of the African Mahgreb (i.e. Tunisia and Morocco) included as well as Algeria. When the resistance to this by the other WET parties proved immovable, the French held out for Algeria to be covered, and Bérard recalled that On this point, France would not yield. The departments of Algeria were constitutionally a part of France. How could France accept entering a pact in which they were amputated? Parliament would not ratify it . . . How could Algeria be excluded when Alaska was included within the sphere of application of the treaty?29 Despite lobbying, the other parties were extremely reluctant to accede to the inclusion of Algeria. Therefore, in December 1948 France decided to support Italian inclusion, for the simple reason that this would make it harder to exclude Algeria. A memo sent to the French Ambassador in Washington, Bonnet, stated that ‘if Italy were not included in the treaty, the Anglo–American powers would hesitate to include French North Africa among the territories guaranteed against aggression’. Neither was this a misjudgement on the part of France: Canada openly acknowledged this at a WET meeting on 22 December 1948.30 In this sense, the French support for Italy was clearly instrumental in nature. However, the second dimension was more directly concerned with Italy’s strategic position. This is hinted at by the French Foreign Secretary Chauvel when he noted in his memoirs that Italian inclusion, as well as making the inclusion of Algeria a logical step, would also allow France to ‘place herself at the centre of the system and not, as originally foreseen, at the outskirts’. In this statement Chauvel highlights a growing French strategic unease about the focus of the North Atlantic Treaty, which only really made itself felt after the Brussels powers ratified the Atlantic Treaty idea in October 1948. Once the idea of a treaty had been taken on board, rather than a US guarantee to the Brussels states, the question of the strategic epicentre of the Pact became more pressing. With the bulk of debate about membership being given over to the Scandinavian states and Portugal, France, in Folly’s words, ‘seemed relegated to a southern flank – and a flank exposed by the omission of Italy which meant that the southern front would now be on French soil’. While the possibility of a Mediterranean arrangement was still realistic, this was not a cause for too much concern, but as the idea

36


faded and it appeared as though Italy might receive little more than a declaration of support, south-eastern strategic considerations impinged onto Atlantic ones.31 Thus by the close of 1948 the French had decided that Italy must be included in the North Atlantic Treaty. This view was driven by a blend of pragmatic instrumentalism and strategic concerns about the southern flank. However, we have already seen that this position became firm at the same time as the other parties to the North Atlantic Treaty negotiations were coming to opposite conclusions about Italy. This left France arguing almost alone, with some support from the Netherlands.32 The opposition was not particularly cohesive, especially as the other states looked to the US for some indication of a lead. Despite this, opposition was strong enough for the French to threaten to either block the invitation to Norway, or to pull out of the treaty themselves if Italy and Algeria were not included.33 It is not clear how things would have gone had the situation persisted like this: it is possible that the French might have had to back down. However, the second clinching factor came in January 1949 when the Italian government made a direct appeal for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty. There were rumours at the time that the Italian request, made to the US State Department, was the result of US encouragement, and possibly a ‘put-up job’ by Washington to force the Europeans into accepting Italian membership. Certainly, the Italian request dramatically changed the political picture: the British Foreign Office noted that ‘we shall probably have to acquiesce. An agreement not to invite Italy would perhaps have been possible; but a refusal of their formal request for an invitation . . . would be very damaging to the Italian Government’.34 It is difficult to say whether this perception about the US role was an accurate one: but, applying the principle ‘to whose profit’ in assessing whether Italy was prompted to make the request, it seems that the agenda which most benefited was that of France. Whatever the truth, the electoral victory of the Christian Democrats in Italy, which had been so important in the dwindling of support for Italian entry into the North Atlantic Treaty, was also the beginning of Italian pressure to be included in Western defence arrangements. This was not, however, very surprising: the fact that the new administration was pro-western was clearly likely to allay fears in Western Europe and simultaneously make Italy more keen to be admitted to Western arrangements. From a very early stage, the Prime Minister De Gasperi and his Foreign Minister made accession to either the Atlantic alliance or the Brussels Pact a prime goal of Italian foreign policy.


The reasons behind this policy were both military and political. Militarily, the Italian General Staff had noted in November that a bilateral military relationship with the US was likely to become very difficult: The United States are very cautious about making a decision [on aid] as they want to be sure about our intentions towards the western Allies . . . Congress is not inclined to grant us the surplus we asked for because it first wants to know the requirements of the other European countries interested in strengthening their armed forces. Thus, in the military sphere, ‘inclusion in the Alliance became the best possible way to obtain for Italy what had been taken for granted thanks to the existing relationship with the US’.35 Political factors exerted similar pressures. Italy, a defeated Axis power, was heavily dependent on the US for aid in its post-war reconstruction. Other European powers, as well as being wholly unable to offer the same aid, were also understandably preoccupied with the Italian peace treaty. Italy was therefore dependent in political–economic, as well as military, terms on the continuing relationship with the US. Moreover, a major preoccupation of post-war Italy was rehabilitation after the experience with Fascism. Rainero describes ‘a return to full membership of the international community’ as the key goal in Italian foreign policy, and the British Foreign Office noted that ‘for Italy, association in an Atlantic Pact is as much a matter of amour propre as security, probably more so’.36 The most immediate obstacle to this was not the doubts among the parties to the WET talks, but within the Italian political system. In particular, the PCI and the Italian Social Democrats opposed joining the alliance; the opposition of the Social Democrats was particularly important since they were part of a coalition government with the Christian Democrats.37 The decisive factor in the formation of the necessary crossparty consensus seems to have been De Gasperi’s argument that, since the Atlantic alliance was going to be formed, Italy faced a stark choice of joining up or being left isolated and defenceless.38 The Social Democrats agreed, and the Italian Ambassador, Tarchiani, presented his government’s request to the State Department. This was a crucial act: the fact that the Italian request was made to Washington alone meant that the other parties at the WET talks subsequently looked to the US to make a decision. Spaak, the Belgian Prime Minister, noted that ‘in the final analysis the question lay between Italy and the US’, and that Belgium at least would not oppose Italian entry

38


if the US wished it. Furthermore, the Brussels Pact states, at a Consultative Council meeting on 28 January, agreed that Italy could join the North Atlantic Treaty if the US wished it. Acheson had in fact already noted that it was ‘important that Italy should not be rebuffed; they should not be thrown out of the Western community’. The concern here was that, if Italy was not to be in NATO, then some other form of linkage with the West needed to be arranged.39 The form that this linkage should take was now for the US to decide. The fact that the State Department seemed unable to do so is indicative of the disconsensus still existing in the bureaucracy. To recap, Kennan and Bohlen both opposed the inclusion of Italy, while Hickerson and the military both supported inclusion, although the military support was somewhat qualified. The US JCS had argued that There is no military necessity for Italy being included in the North Atlantic Pact. However, from the military point of view it is highly desirable that Italy be included in the Brussels Pact . . . While it may be that Italy’s membership in either pact might prove, in an emergency, of doubtful value, it is certain that it will be harmful from the military viewpoint for her to be a member of neither.40 This falls some way short of a ringing endorsement, but the JCS clearly felt that this was case of ‘better in than out’. Secretary of State Acheson, faced with conflicting advice from his own staff and the military, and with no clear indication of what the West European states would do (other than support whatever the US opted for), took the decision to the President. Acheson’s explanation of the state of play on Italy is revealing, and worth quoting at length: The real issue was not . . . the merits of the arguments [for and against Italian inclusion]. The real issue grew out of the position in which we now found ourselves. There had never been a well thought out United States position on the exclusion or inclusion of Italy . . . Nevertheless, in the course of the negotiations, the United States negotiators had drifted into the position that the European nations must take a position upon Italy. This [European] position had now crystallized. France was so emphatically in favour that she had stated, and we believed she meant it, that she would have to reconsider her whole relation to the Pact if Italy was not to be included. Canada now took an affirmative attitude in favor. The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg . . . were now positive rather than merely nonobjecting. The British had stated that they would withdraw their


objections if the other nations around the table were in favor of Italian inclusion. Therefore, the United States would find itself in the position of either accepting the European judgment or rejecting it. I believe that if we reject it we would have serious difficulty with France, considerable delay in the conclusion of the treaty and a good deal of publicity about a split among the Western powers. It seemed to me that in the end we would probably accept Italian inclusion. If we did not accept it we might still have a treaty but we would get it in rather a damaged condition.41 By this time, Acheson himself had opted to support Italy, as he recommended inclusion to the President. The recommendation had three key themes: the consequences in Italy of a rejection by the Western powers, the established US commitment to Italy and the consequences for the North Atlantic Treaty of a rejection decision. The European position, insofar as there was a European position, was support by France, and resigned acquiescence by Britain and the Benelux states. Taken together, these arguments proved decisive: Truman, like his Secretary of State, considered Italian inclusion to be undesirable, but acquiesced in the face of the consequences of rejection. To summarise, three aspects of Italian inclusion are of particular importance for the wider themes of this study. First, the military case in Italy’s favour was less than overwhelming; it was the lack of a viable alternative, rather than the strength of the Italian case, that was the decisive military factor. The real strength of the Italian case lay in Italy’s claim to be an identifiably Western state in terms of political orientation. Second, and in spite of this political claim, support for Italian entry was at best half-hearted, and highly instrumental in nature. Because of this, it was hard for the European allies to come to a consensus on an issue that commanded little support in its own right. In this situation, they looked to the US to make a decision. Third, one potent factor in the eventual decision to support Italian entry was one that would recur in later accessions: the potential consequences of a refusal. Once Italy had made its request for inclusion, the allies were faced with the question of what would happen if they rejected Italy. This was very clearly a major influence on the final decision.

Scandinavia In contrast to Italy, the Scandinavian states, which formed the ‘stepping-stone countries’ along with Portugal, were viewed at the WET negotiations as obvious candidates for membership. Only France briefly

40


demurred, on the grounds that ‘it would not be prudent to extend the field of cooperation to countries close to the Soviet Union’, which ruled out Scandinavia. With these reservations aside, it seemed clear that a North Atlantic defence arrangement would need to include these states if it was to have any practical meaning. In the days before the longrange bomber and the intercontinental ballistic missile, it would have been difficult for the US to implement its guarantee to West Europe without access to Iceland, Greenland (controlled by Denmark) and the Azores (controlled by Portugal). Norway’s position made it an important strategic point in British military considerations. Moreover, the problems of limiting membership along the Mediterranean coastline, a factor that mitigated against Italian inclusion, did not really apply in the case of Scandinavia. There were no Nordic equivalents of Greece and Turkey to press for membership, and the only real alternative to Scandinavian adherence was a Scandinavian mutual defence pact. This latter course, for reasons that are explained below, never really got off the ground.42 The strategic importance of the Scandinavian states was acknowledged by both the US and British governments, both of whom recognised that from a military point of view their adherence in a war would be indispensable. There were some differences of emphasis between the two. The US was more interested in those parts of Scandinavia that could be important in a ‘polar strategy’ against the US. This idea, which gained ground among the American military after 1945, centred on the notion that a future attack on the US was likely to come across the Arctic basin. Therefore, it was of increasing importance, as the Cold War developed, to ensure the adherence of those parts of Scandinavia – Greenland and Iceland – that were central in such a scenario. Moreover, the Vandenburg Resolution required that any security arrangement entered into by the US must be advantageous to its security. An Atlantic pact that did not include the stepping-stone countries would clearly be lacking in this regard, and so their non-inclusion would have seriously jeopardised the ratification of the Treaty in the US.43 Britain tended to see Scandinavia as ‘a kind of special interest sphere’, and developed military ties with all three principal Scandinavian states. Petersen notes that ‘a long tradition of political association had given the British a keen understanding of the difficult position of Scandinavia between east and west and of the subtle intricacies of intraScandinavian relations’.44 The importance of these states was therefore not really in question, and as the Cold War’s polarising forces made themselves felt through 1947–8, the question of the states on the


periphery of the West European heartland took on an added significance. Therefore, it is not really surprising that a critical factor in the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty (which is second in importance only to the Czech coup) was the Soviet pressure on Norway in early 1948, in the form of possible demands for a mutual non-aggression pact along the lines of the Soviet–Finnish model. In the context engendered by the events in Prague, this seems almost calculated to heighten tension. Lange, the Norwegian Foreign Minister (later Prime Minister), immediately contacted Bevin (a supporter of Norwegian entry into the Treaty) to ask what sort of assistance Norway could expect from the West in this eventuality. Both Norway and Denmark had hitherto been disinclined to become entangled in the emerging confrontation in West Europe, but the Czech coup and the Soviet–Finnish Pact were instrumental in changing their policies. Lange later recalled the ‘very strong impression’ made upon Norway and Denmark by the Czech coup. The coup was ‘the beginning of the reorientation’ which led to Norwegian and Danish membership of the North Atlantic Treaty.45 When we bear in mind that Bevin’s original Western Union concept had included Scandinavia, we can begin to understand how a possible Nordic parallel with Czech or Finnish events would be a cause for major concern: it could conceivably jeopardise the whole Western Union concept. It was in this mood that Bevin sent the almost panicky aidemémoire to Washington that instigated the Pentagon Talks, specifically citing the Norwegian situation as the prime evidence of the threat faced. Bevin urged that All possible steps should be taken to forestall a Norwegian defection at this time, which would involve the appearance of Russia on the Atlantic and the collapse of the entire Scandinavian system. This would in turn prejudice the chance of calling any halt to the relentless advance of Russia into Western Europe . . . He [Bevin] now considers that the best course would be to take very early steps, before Norway goes under.46 The reference to ‘the entire Scandinavian system’ is evidence of the British conception of Scandinavia as a strategic unit; this was in contrast to the US view. However, the US, at this point, required persuasion on the subject of joining a North Atlantic Pact, but not on the strategic importance of the Scandinavian states. In October 1947 the planning staff had noted that ‘we regard the integrity of Scandinavia in the event of a war with Russia as almost as important as the integrity of

42


France, Holland and Belgium’. Moreover, the US had been negotiating bases’ agreements with Denmark and Iceland since the close of the war. Small wonder then that most NATO historians identify the perceived threat to Norway as central to US involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty. Neither is it surprising that that agreement on the inclusion of the Scandinavian states was swiftly reached at the Pentagon discussions.47 This consensus was echoed in the Washington Paper, which argued that a North Atlantic Pact ‘would not be fully effective’ without the adherence of the ‘stepping-stone’ countries. As noted earlier, the Paper also suggested that if these states did not desire full membership status, some limited arrangement should be worked out. This does underline the importance of the ‘stepping stones’, and also hints at the real issue that hung over the Scandinavian question at the WET talks. In a striking reverse image of the Italian question, the issue was not whether the negotiating parties wanted the Scandinavian states to join, but whether the Scandinavian states themselves would actually want membership. From the days of the Pentagon Paper, it was important that possible new members be secretly sounded out about whether they did in fact wish to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. Given the consensus on their adherence, the Scandinavian states (except Sweden, which was always a long shot) plus Portugal and Ireland were secretly advised in late December/early January. All except Ireland eventually did accept, but acceptance did not come immediately for Norway and Denmark. The reason for this was the concurrent negotiations for a Scandinavian Defence Union (SDU), a sort of Nordic Brussels Pact. Formal discussions on a SDU were held during January and February 1949, but had in fact been informally progressing since the summer of the previous year.48 For the Scandinavian states, as for Europe as a whole, the emerging bipolar antagonism generated questions of alignment and alliance: whether to belong, as Kennan put it. Alignment with the Soviet Union on the Finnish model was never an option; the real choice was between four alternatives. These were a non-aligned SDU, a Westaligned SDU backed in some form by the Western states, the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT), or unilateral isolated neutrality. The difficulty in formulating a joint Scandinavian policy lay in fundamental differing ideas about what an SDU would be for and what it could realistically achieve. Petersen offers a useful summary of the different positions (Table 2.1).49

The Membership Question, 1948–9 43 Table 2.1

Alternative forms of SDU Denmark

Norway

Sweden

Favoured options

1 Non-aligned SDU 2 West-aligned SDU

1 West-aligned SDU 2 NAT

1 Non-aligned SDU 2 Isolated neutrality

Unacceptable options

3 NAT

3 Non-aligned SDU 4 Isolated neutrality

3 West-aligned SDU 4 NAT

4 Isolated neutrality

Reproduced with the permission of Sage Publications

Three key aspects of this stand out. First, the Norwegian and Swedish positions are diametrically opposed, with no common denominator. The favoured options for one are the unacceptable options for the other, and thus SDU looks to have been an impossibility from the start. Second, Denmark’s position is between the two: Denmark was more in favour of a West-aligned SDU or Atlantic pact than Sweden, but more inclined to a non-aligned SDU than Norway. Therefore, although the majority vote would have been for a non-aligned SDU, it was in the second-favoured options that a majority favoured the North Atlantic Treaty. Finally, for Denmark as for Norway, neutrality was an unacceptable option, and the incommensurability of the Swedish and Norwegian choices looked likely to lead them to the North Atlantic Treaty. Either way, the Scandinavian states were always likely to experience grave difficulties in adopting a common security stance. Peterson’s analysis of these preferences concludes that the basic reasoning behind the Danish preferences was a desire ‘to find a solution which kept the Scandinavian countries together’. Only when it became clear that this would not be feasible did the Danes opt for the North Atlantic Treaty, although the Danish government still required US assurances that the North Atlantic Treaty was ‘in complete harmony with the United Nations Charter’, and that its purpose was ‘solely defensive and peaceful’.50 There was a similar link with Iceland: Lundestad notes that the US ‘assumed that if Norway and Denmark did not come into NATO, Iceland would probably remain outside as well’.51 For both Denmark and Norway, the underlying priority was a search for external guarantees of their security, and this itself was partly a result

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of their experience of the Swedish option of isolated neutrality. Both had been formally neutral at the outset of the Second World War, and both had had that neutrality violated by Germany. Thus in the developing East–West antagonism after 1945, it became imperative for security to be underwritten by guarantees with other states; self-reliance was not an option. Sweden’s experience of neutrality was markedly different, and this goes a long way to explaining why the second-favoured option for Sweden was wholly unacceptable to Norway and Denmark. However, this does not completely explain the differing policies of the two states. For Norway, explanatory factors can be found in interplay between political culture and strategic reasoning. 1940 had a decisive impact on Norwegian neutralism, and engendered an assumption that Norway was dependent on British support in the event of a war. This was gradually linked to hopes of US assistance. Moreover, it had been suggested by the US that economic aid – vital for post-war recovery – might not be forthcoming without a strategic commitment to the West. Therefore Norway’s security policy was driven by the idea that ‘Norway must under no circumstances squander her perceived and highly valued relationship of trust with the West’.52 The strategic dimension of this was driven by Norway’s exposed position: it simply could not rely on a Scandinavian guarantee that did not hold out the prospect of Western assistance. Sweden and Denmark were not providers of security in anything like the same way Britain and the US were. The political dimension stemmed from the promise of Marshall Aid but also from the effects of past cooperation with Britain, especially during the war. In Lundestad’s words, ‘Norway and in part Denmark simply felt much closer to the West than did Sweden’. These factors – the need for powerful underwriting of Norwegian security, and a closer sense of community with the West – explain why an SDU was acceptable to Norway only if it was embedded in a wider Western system.53 Denmark, like Norway, emerged from the war with its previous neutrality policy discredited and, like Norway, embarked on a search for external guarantees of security. Like Norway again, Denmark was in a highly exposed strategic position; in fact the possibility of an external guarantor successfully defending Danish territory in the event of a war were slim. Denmark was therefore keen to avoid being drawn into greatpower politics with their consequent risks of war, but at the same time was painfully aware that unilaterally staying out of such a war had proved unworkable in the past. This dilemma was made markedly more


acute as bipolarity asserted itself and the chances of a third way between the superpowers became, for Denmark, more remote.54 This was further exacerbated by external factors, which drew Denmark in different directions. Firstly, there was a natural bias towards the West in Danish foreign policy, and relations with Britain were ‘especially intimate’. However, this Western orientation was tempered by the risks inherent in too close a relationship, specifically the risk of being ‘automatically and instantaneously attacked by the Soviet Union in the event of a general war’. Thus Denmark hoped for a non-aligned SDU as its optimum choice, on the grounds that this would be the best way to stay out of a war. Both Denmark and Norway were themselves under some pressure from Washington regarding their alliance choices. It had been made clear that US military aid would not be available if they did not link themselves in some way with the Atlantic defence system.55 Such were the positions of Denmark and Norway at the SDU talks that took place at Karlstad in January and February 1949. Both were interested in Scandinavian defence cooperation and both wanted to simultaneously preserve links with the Western powers, even as those powers were forming a defence organisation of their own. For Norway the links with the West needed to be deeper than for Denmark, but both viewed the idea of isolated neutrality as a non-starter. It was over the links with the West that the talks failed: Norway simply could not accept the way in which these links were dealt with in the Karlstad formula. Once the formula foundered, both states fell back on the option that for them came next: the North Atlantic Treaty.56 The SDU negotiations also impacted on the accession of Iceland. For the US in particular this was an absolute necessity, but Iceland had made it plain that its participation in the North Atlantic Treaty would be very difficult if Norway and Denmark were not included. Thus the SDU had the potential to affect the entire North Atlantic Treaty itself, if it was adopted. The parties at the WET talks were therefore watching the outcome of Karlstad with concern. If the SDU was in fact set up, then this would raise inevitable and unavoidable questions about its relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty. In fact, the British government, anticipating these issues and (as we saw earlier) more interested than the US in preserving the strategic unity of Scandinavia, had developed a plan for this contingency. In essence the plan was that Norway and Denmark should join the North Atlantic Treaty, but also develop a defence relationship with Sweden in which Sweden would enter a war only if Norway and Denmark were directly attacked. Sweden would possess a Scandinavian

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defence guarantee, backed by the Brussels Pact, if she were attacked herself. This plan, drawn up in August 1948, had the advantages of preserving Scandinavian strategic unity, allowing Sweden to pursue a nonalignment policy of sorts, and relieving the North Atlantic Treaty states of the difficult task of defending Scandinavia itself.57 The plan was endorsed, with some amendments, by the US, and it clearly shows the influence of the limited membership idea. In the end, however, Norway vetoed the plan, and for similar reasons to those which sunk limited membership. Lange pointed out that Sweden would gain a guarantee from the West with no other quid pro quo than a solidarity commitment to Norway and Denmark. Because of the Western orientation of her Government Norway would have to accept automatic commitments far beyond the borders of Scandinavia to obtain the same guarantee.58 For this reason, Norway and Denmark were accepted into the North Atlantic Treaty after the failure of the Karlstad formula. Had some Western-oriented SDU been politically feasible, then this would very likely have been accepted, provided that it ensured Norwegian and Danish adherence to the Atlantic strategic system. The problem was that ensuring such a commitment was the very thing that made the SDU untenable. But both British and US service chiefs recognised the importance of Scandinavia to an Atlantic system: their main objection to inclusion in the Treaty was the fact that full membership would entail a guarantee of security. As with the Italian case, this would have been difficult to implement in practice without altering the entire shape of the Atlantic system. However, when ways around this – limited membership, the British–American formula – failed, the North Atlantic Treaty remained the only option, both for the negotiators and for Norway and Denmark. To recap, the strategic case for Norwegian and Danish inclusion was plain and virtually unanswerable. This would have been the case regardless of the format – the ‘dumb-bell’ format, for example – of the eventual treaty, which is evinced by the fact that even the uncertain format sketched out in the Pentagon Paper identified these two states as indispensable. Little mention was made of their political relationship to the Brussels Treaty states, and the relationship does not appear to have been seen as a strong one: the fact that Norway and Denmark were initially candidates for limited membership underlines the strategic rationale for inclusion. This was a mirror image of the Italian case, in which the


political link to West Europe was stronger than the strategic value to a North Atlantic Pact. Thus, the North Atlantic Treaty would have been decidedly harder to implement in the absence of Norwegian and Danish membership, or at least adherence, and so there was little disagreement about inviting them. This is shown by the contingency plans made during the Karlstad negotiations. The difficulty lay in whether Norway and Denmark would wish to join the treaty. For the two states, recent experience seems to have been the overwhelming rationale for accession. Both had diametrically different experiences of neutralism to Sweden. This seems to have been especially strong in Norway, whose first priority was Western alignment in one form or another. For Denmark, the conflict between a neutralist tradition and contemporary realities was stronger; the heart was with Sweden but the head was with Norway. In the end, a pragmatic assessment of Denmark’s immediate security needs proved stronger than neutralist instincts.

Portugal Like the Scandinavian states, Portugal was recognised as a strategic necessity from the days of the Pentagon Talks. It was one of the ‘stepping-stone’ countries, and as such its adherence was vital if Atlantic lines of communication were to be secured in the event of a war. The US in particular, backed by the assessments of its military, pressed for these states to be included. At a WET meeting on 9 August 1948, Bohlen argued that ‘without the Azores . . . help could not be got to Europe in significant quantities at all . . . [A]ny pact which did not include these areas vital to the defenses of North America would fail, at least in part, to meet one of the United States’ desiderata [under the Vandenburg Resolution] that it must contribute to the security [of the United States]’.59 Coupled with this was Portugal’s long-standing alliance with Britain, a contender for history’s longest-lived alliance. The foundation of the alliance was a basic geopolitical affinity, and Albano identifies a number of reasons for its longevity: both were Atlantic maritime powers; both projected overseas power by empire; the alliance had a lack of precision that gave it a certain flexibility; and it never forbade either power from entering into alliance with other states.60 Like Norway and Denmark, Portugal had adopted a neutral stance during the Second World War, but in this case the policy was a markedly successful one. In March 1939, Portugal had signed a non-aggression treaty with Spain, which was instrumental in allowing the two to

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remain formally neutral during the war. Nogueira argues that, had the treaty not been signed, the two might well have found themselves at war. This was because Franco’s Spain clearly leaned towards the Axis in its wartime policy, whilst Portugal displayed the opposite. Portuguese assistance to the Allies came in the form of allowing British and later US use of the facilities on the Azores. For this reason, and because the treaty with Spain had possibly helped contain the war behind the Pyrenees, Portugal’s relations with the Allies remained good after the war; Franco, in contrast, was a pariah. Portugal therefore had immediate strategic advantages, an ancient alliance and recent goodwill to make it a politically worthwhile and militarily essential ally for the North Atlantic Treaty parties. Only the nature of its domestic regime presented problems. At the WET talks, Canada in particular expressed doubts about the wisdom of Portuguese inclusion. While the Pentagon Talks set out the blueprint for membership, the Canadian position was that ‘on balance it would not be wise to include Portugal among the original signatories’. This was because the idea behind the Pact was ‘the spiritual mobilisation of the liberal democracies as well as being a basis for economic and military cooperation against Soviet threats . . . It would be difficult, if not impossible, to say that the present regime in Portugal embodies these principles.’61 This highlights the Canadian view of the North Atlantic Treaty as a part of a revitalisation of democratic states: that these states were democracies was crucial in their cooperation, and Portugal thus seemed an anomaly in spite of its strategic advantages. The argument was that the Treaty could be dangerously weakened by the inclusion of a state whose political values clashed with those values the Treaty was supposed to uphold. Again, the idea of limited membership held out the prospect of finding a way around this. As we have seen, the demise of this scheme meant that a straight choice was faced between ideological homogeneity or strategic advantages. In the end, it was recognised that the damage done to the Treaty by not including Portugal would be far outweighed by the political issues involved in her accession. Thus by November 1948, Canada had agreed that ‘Portugal should be given the chance of joining if she wants to do so’ and so it was once again a question of whether an invitation would be accepted. The question here is why Portugal, having adopted a successful neutralism policy in the past, opted for inclusion in a military alliance. The key to understanding this lies in the Portuguese perception of changed geostrategic factors.62 For Salazar, who dominated Portuguese politics in this period, the war


had produced a seismic shift in the structure of world power, in which the three key hegemonies would be Britain, the US and the Soviet Union. He then argued that ‘the circumstances are evolving in such a way that one of the greatest centres of world politics . . . will be placed by the force of things on the vast Atlantic’.63 Salazar thus saw the strategic epicentre of world power moving from continental Europe to the Atlantic: this held unavoidable consequences for foreign policy in Portugal. Nogueira argues that ‘It seemed to [Salazar] that World War II would be the last time [Portugal] could and should be neutral in a European conflagration’. This perception of a changed strategic epicentre led to two priorities for Salazar, the first being the inclusion of Portugal in an Atlantic system. Ideological considerations aside, this was unlikely to be a difficult question for the WET parties. The second was an assurance that, by joining the North Atlantic Treaty, Portugal would not be signing up to the more ideological project outlined in Bevin’s Western Union concept. The British Ambassador in Portugal identified the reasons for this as ‘a morbid preoccupation of the Portuguese with the idea of sovereignty, and . . . a feeling that his political system is not properly appreciated by the democratic powers, who might one day try to force on Portugal a form of government for which he believes her people are unsuited’.64 This assurance was given, but not without some discreet creativity with the truth. The British Foreign Office acknowledged that it was ‘not entirely truthful’ to claim that the Atlantic Pact and the Western Union concept bore no relation to each other. However, informing Salazar that the two were not one and the same thing, but avoiding an acknowledgement that they were nonetheless related, solved this difficulty. This gave ‘the necessary reassurance whilst still remaining within the bounds of truth’.65 Portugal then, was never going to be a candidate for the Brussels Pact from the point of view of either party. The North Atlantic Treaty represented the best option for Portugal because it was not an obvious part of the Western Union idea in the way that the Brussels Pact was, and because it placed Portugal at the strategic centre of things, rather than being a part of the periphery. To sign up to the Brussels Pact would mean the possibility of entangling Portugal in a West European future that he distrusted, and in relegating Portugal to the outer fringes of the pact. Salazar may have wanted no part of the Western Union idea, but he could not afford to be excluded from the strategic concept to which Western Union was related. Nogueira notes that Salazar was ‘a man whose political philosophy and very personal reading of history led him

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to stress the idea of his country being historically alien to inner European conflicts’. 66 In such a perspective, the key impact of bipolarity lay in the fact that a future war would not be an ‘inner European’ affair, but transatlantic conflict. Portugal, therefore, was something of a special case. Unlike Italy, it was strategically vital but politically distanced; unlike Norway and Denmark, it had successfully pursued a neutralist policy in the last war. Its commonality with all of them lay in a recognition of the stark choices imposed by East–West bipolarity and a changed strategic structure.

Conclusions It is fair to say that none of the original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty were signing the pact they would have ideally liked. Neither was the pact a copy of the draft that had been put together at the Pentagon a year earlier. All were forced to compromise, and some spent a good deal of the negotiations working out their own position as they went along. At least one signatory, France, had reason to be dubious about the long-term suitability of the Treaty. Others, for example Britain, could look on the pact as broadly what they had hoped for. And the US had finally decided, against the judgement and advice of some of its most senior decision-makers, to break with a long-standing tradition. But for all this, the signing of the Treaty meant that the international security aspects of post-war recovery would be pursued via the Atlanticist framework. It can be seen from the substance of this chapter that there were conflicts of national priorities and different strands of systemic purpose in the Treaty. These can best be viewed in the context of the three themes of this study: external forces, the internal debate and taxonomy of membership. External factors The Treaty was, in significant part, formed by and for the Cold War, but the Cold War also served to highlight long-term problems of European security that the North Atlantic Treaty would also attempt to address. There were aspects of the Pact that would have been necessary with or without the Cold War, and some that were distinctively post-1945 in nature. To take the underlying forces first, the state system in West Europe was suffering the effects of structural breakdown. The war had been both a symptom and a cause of this breakdown. It was a symptom in that it drove home the lesson that the ‘German Question’ was insoluble by classical systemic means. This meant that the system could no


longer be self-balancing. It was a cause in its destructive effect on the major powers of the system. These major powers, in whose hands the operation of the classical system had lain, were forced to seek external help in both the reconstruction of the system and its long-term stability. Thus the pacts of Dunkirk and Brussels were naturally formed by the states that remained when the last great balancing conflict in Europe’s ‘30 years’ war’ was over. The way in which the perceptions of threat shifted from Germany to the Soviet Union demonstrates that the key concern was systemic stability rather than protection from armed attack, as does the fact that Germany never really faded from view as a potential threat to the system. Therefore, the treaties of Dunkirk, Brussels and Washington can be seen as organically related to each other; their differences of emphasis should not mask their fundamentally similar concern. It was always likely that some US presence would be required if international politics in Europe was to escape its structural deficiencies, and thus it may be that writers such as Joffe and DePorte are right to argue that a European system which included the US represented the optimum feasible solution, with or without the Cold War to prompt such an outcome.67 The presence of the Soviet Union added a new aspect to the end of the classical system. This was manifested not only in its looming presence and military potential, but also in its irreconcilably opposed ideas about what the reconstructed European order should look like. When taken together, these factors of power and philosophy combined to present the Soviet Union as almost axiomatically hostile, once it had emerged from its inter-war isolationist shell. Probably nothing demonstrates this better than the Czech coup of February 1948. The coup in Czechoslovakia is illustrative of the key external forces that impacted on NATO’s creation and its membership debates. First, it shows how the orientation of a state between East and West impacted directly on systemic structure. The coup decoupled Czechoslovakia from Marshall Aid, and from the Western political–economic reconstruction programme, into a closed bloc. The strategic implications of this should be clear. Czechoslovakia was effectively ‘lost’ to West Europe in political, economic and military terms, and this is the beginning of the zerosum game that characterised Cold War Europe and the search for allies. In such an atmosphere, the re-orientation of Czechoslovakia was not simply a shift in alliances in the classical sense, but a basic structural shift in itself: it made West Europe ‘smaller’ in all senses of the word. The experiences of the 1930s, climaxing with Munich and the dis-

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memberment of Czechoslovakia, are a clear parallel. This had the effect of tightening the emerging European division and led to a markedly increased desire to secure allies. As the system became progressively less fluid, a state that was unaligned came to be seen as a potential loss. Secondly, the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet orbit was a ‘bottom-up’ phenomenon: it was the result of a domestic political coup. As such it illustrates the threat that was viewed as more immediate than the possibility of actual military attack. The fact that continental West Europe was recovering from invasion, occupation and liberation was the reason for this. In an atmosphere of political, economic and social dislocation, the possibility of subversion became seen as more pressing. Marxism–Leninism, by its nature, calls to an industrial working class and for the overthrow of capitalism: West Europe depended on both of these if reconstruction was to succeed. Kennan’s portrayal of the nature of the Soviet threat struck a genuine chord here: most West European governments believed that the Soviet Union would not in fact need to resort to military force in order to achieve its aims. Thirdly, the coup was influential simply by virtue of having happened when it did. It confirmed Western fears of how the Soviet Union was to be defined as threatening, but its timing seemed to indicate that this threat was immediate. The possibility of Soviet pressure on Norway illustrates a fourth aspect. The possibility of a coup in Norway was remote, but the apparent pressure on Norway to sign a Finnish-style agreement with the Soviet Union was seen as evidence that a state could be dealigned by political and diplomatic pressure as well as by subversion. Again, the zero-sum thinking of the time dictated that if a state signed an agreement with the Soviet Union, then this represented a strategic loss to the West. As well as drawing the founders of NATO closer together, this factor was probably influential in the abandonment of the limited membership idea. Alignment was insufficient; to be certain of adherence, firm alliances needed to be signed. This subsection offers a picture of the basic reasons for expanding the North Atlantic Treaty beyond its starting membership. The main reason was simply the geostrategic elements that needed to be added for the Treaty to work. The new signatories were similarly looking for external guarantees of their security. For Italy the North Atlantic Treaty represented the only realistic option for achieving this; the alternative was neutralism. The Scandinavian states had the short-lived alternative of the SDU. None could ignore the structural effects of the collapse of the classical European system. For Italy, this meant finding a way to re-assert its old place as a participant in the system. For the Scandinavian states


it meant the end of any neutralist hopes. Denmark and Norway had both had their neutrality violated by Germany, and thus had direct experience of the key structural change of twentieth-century European security. Thus there seems to have been a basic harmony between reasons for expanding the North Atlantic Treaty and the reasons for joining it. Some jarring is evident in the fact that most of the new signatories were to some extent unguaranteeable. However, it also seems that geostrategic logic and structural imperatives were more important than the possibility of war. Whether they were guaranteeable or not, Norway and Denmark clearly believed that their chances of maintaining political integrity were better inside the North Atlantic Treaty than in a nonaligned SDU. It can be seen that the idea of a Soviet threat was a multidimensional one. The factors of European order, ideology and geostrategic reasoning all intertwine, and all impacted on the issue of who was an ally against this threat. However, the principal facets were the strategic and the political. These mingled in Treaty membership, but it was the political dimension that was the bedrock. Bevin’s foundational Western Union concept clearly demonstrates that the core threat was perceived to be to the heartland of Western Europe: to its post-war reconstruction and to the re-establishment of order. Once this had become apparent, the strategic implications naturally presented themselves. Taken together, these two dimensions provided the framework in which the taxonomy of membership was devised. However, it is clear that no single template for a North Atlantic state was prevalent when choosing new signatories. The North Atlantic can be defined in geographical, strategic and political terms, but none were decisive across the board. It was geographically and strategically necessary to include Portugal, and political considerations were dismissed. Political considerations overrode clear geostrategic ones in the case of Spain. Italy’s lack of geographical and strategic qualifications was overlooked because it was recognisably ‘one of us’, and requested to be recognised as such. Moreover, the inclusion of new signatories was affected by the nature of the allied debate. The internal debate A constant motif in the debates about membership was how prospective members related to the negotiating parties. The later signatories were all discussed in terms of the relationship (political, strategic or geographical) that they had with the WET states. Two decisions in the talks were the most influential. These were the decision to establish a North

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Atlantic Treaty (rather than a US guarantee to the Brussels Pact), and the abandoning of the limited membership idea. Once these two decisions had been taken, then only Italy remained as a potential member whose qualifications were open to serious question. In order to make an Atlantic pact work, the stepping-stone countries were clearly indispensable, despite some lingering French doubts about extending the treaty so close to the Soviet Union. However, the debates leading up to these decisions show some differing ideas about what the pact was designed to achieve. For France, the aim was primarily to secure immediate US military aid, and so membership needed to be restricted to the Brussels Pact states. Therefore, France resisted attempts to broaden the perspective of the pact. The British had a wider transatlantic strategic system in mind, in which the US would play the balancing role once occupied by Britain itself. The US position, in so far as there was one, tended to move between the two for the first part of the negotiations. Canada also favoured an Atlantic Pact, but differed from Britain and the US in the desire to use the North Atlantic Treaty as an embryonic transatlantic community based on shared values. These were the key powers at the WET negotiations, but it was the US, Britain and Canada who seem to have had the most decisive influence on the eventual shape of the Treaty. It was these states whose strategic visions impacted most strongly onto the idea of a North Atlantic Treaty and its articles. There was, as we saw, little real dispute over membership once the idea of an Atlantic Pact had been accepted as the preferred arrangement. Only Italy proved a difficult case. This case is summarised in more detail in the following subsection on the taxonomy of membership, but some aspects are worth mentioning here. The principal aspect is the way in which the European states, unable to reach firm agreement among themselves about Italy, looked to the US for a decision. Only France possessed a clear position on Italian membership, but this was insufficient to generate support from the other European states. This can be seen as early evidence that the US was acquiring the position of ‘first among equals’, and moreover that this position was not of its own making. It is hard to define the US role as either catalytic or imperial at this stage in NATO history, because for much of the negotiations the US was itself not of one mind on the issue. For a sizeable proportion of the talks, debate within the US continued about the nature of the commitment. Two aspects should be noted. One is that the Treaty had to be ratified in the US legislature, and thus support had to be secured before presenting a


finalised treaty. Therefore, it would have to address domestic foreign policy concerns as well as those of the US government. Second, the US was the definitive member of the planned pact: the Brussels powers had this in common, and for the new signatories it was the deciding factor. Thus the US had a good deal of latent bargaining power at the talks. As far as membership goes, the US did not resort to such tactics, for two reasons. First, as stated, it was not of one mind itself about how to proceed, and second, the other parties at the talks broadly shared its membership list. The impact of domestic politics was a clear factor in the negotiating position of France and the US. The point was made on several occasions that that the North Atlantic Treaty would experience serious ratification difficulties if it did not maintain bipartisan support. For France, it seems as though ratification was used as a negotiating lever, although this does not mean that the possibility of nonratification was not real. This was to be a recurring theme in later expansions, and was also a factor at the WET talks. Even if a delegation opted for the inclusion of a particular state, the final decision was subject to the agreement of their national parliament and was therefore to an extent out of the delegation’s hands. In this way, it was significant that the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty were democracies with constitutional procedures to be observed. This can be seen in the French insistence on Italian inclusion, the US concerns about always maintaining bipartisan support and the caution of Norway and Denmark about joining before the SDU idea was dead and buried. One final distinctive aspect of the WET negotiations is the role of the International Working Party. The great bulk of what Hickerson referred to as ‘the pick and shovel’ work was done by this group of middleechelon diplomats, and it was here too that most consensus was reached. This format would later become institutionalised as, first, the Council of Deputies and, later, the Permanent Representatives on the North Atlantic Council. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the Working Group represents more than simply a collection of individuals who papered over the differing positions of their governments. Rather, it seems as though the Group generated a dynamic of its own, in which a common vision of what the North Atlantic Treaty was became to take shape. Taxonomy of membership The immediate idea behind the North Atlantic Treaty was to make the Marshall Plan work in the increasingly confrontational atmosphere of

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the Cold War; the underlying purpose of which was the reconstruction of international order in West Europe. The perceived threat to this, as it seemed to manifest itself in Czechoslovakia, helped to dictate the choice of allies. The core group of the North Atlantic Treaty was the Brussels Pact states – the political and economic heart of West Europe – plus the transatlantic states without which it seemed unlikely that the Brussels Pact powers would be able to follow their own path. For a US guarantee to have meaning and credibility, it needed to be practicable, and this meant including other states. As Van Kleffens had pointed out at the talks, the inclusion of the US in the new pact was decisive in the accessions of the new signatories. None of these states was likely to want to join the Brussels Pact (which itself had no wish to take on new members), and thus some new arrangement was required. Moreover, Britain in particular viewed the North Atlantic Treaty as embracing West Europe as a strategic system, rather than the French idea of a military Marshall Aid plan. If a new pact was to be set up, then this raised important questions about defining those states that politically and strategically were to be part of it. One of these was the question of guarantees. If the US was to guarantee West Europe, and if this was to be done via an overall Atlantic Pact, then it became clear that all members were to have this guarantee. This had difficult implications. On one hand the North Atlantic Treaty would codify the US guarantee to West Europe, but on the other it would, by virtue of being a North Atlantic treaty, include states of lesser political–economic ties to West Europe and which were difficult to give guarantees to (Norway and Denmark being examples of this). The limited membership idea offered a way around this, but its political difficulties proved too troublesome. And so the Atlantic Pact idea by its nature lent itself to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ membership. The different thickness of ties between members would not be encapsulated in the treaty, and shading of strategic boundaries was not recognised. Western European order would therefore be underwritten by the US, but the principal institution by which this was done possessed wider membership. The Brussels Pact would not now be the key West European security institution: security would flow primarily from the North Atlantic Treaty. However, we have seen that the debates about new members highlighted the multi-faceted nature of the pact. These debates are now summarised.


Italy The debates over Italian accession show the basic tension between the fact that the Treaty was designed to underpin West Europe (where Italy clearly belonged), and the fact that it was a North Atlantic pact (where, geographically, it did not). While a case could be made (just) for defining Italy as strategically a North Atlantic country, the thrust of the case in its favour rested on its strategic, political and historical place as a Western European one. This is clearly seen in the fact that the initial support for Italian membership faltered and then evaporated once it became clear that the PCI was less of an electoral threat than had once been thought. This, taken with the decision to create a North Atlantic treaty, worked against Italian membership. However, the case that Italy was not a North Atlantic country rested largely on the idea of the North Atlantic as simply a geographical expression. In this Kennanite definition, the inclusion was a clear anomaly that diluted the founding basis for treaty membership. However, it is clear that the concept of the North Atlantic Treaty rested on more than geographic criteria. To omit Italy would have had a clear strategic impact on Western Europe (especially France), the very area that the Treaty was aimed at underpinning. Western Europe, like the North Atlantic, is a strategic zone in its own right, with its own boundaries. Italy fitted the former, but only peripherally the latter, of these strategic zones. The West European zone was, supposedly, the preserve of the Brussels Treaty, but this pact was both subordinated to the North Atlantic Treaty and reluctant to take on any new members. The two zones thus met and merged into one another in the North Atlantic Treaty. Moreover, the North Atlantic states who negotiated the Treaty shared more than geostrategic commonalities, but also some common ideas about themselves and the organisation of political and economic life. Italy clearly shared these ideas, particularly after the DC victory in the 1948 elections. Thus Italy might have been a geographic and arguably strategic anomaly, but in terms of history and ideology it clearly fitted the definition of a North Atlantic state. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Italy was a defining moment for NATO, because it was the clearest departure from the geographical concept of the North Atlantic Treaty, and thus is clear evidence of the political criteria for membership. It also took the Treaty further into the Mediterranean than had been planned, and this too had decisive implications for the Mediterranean Pact idea and the accession of Greece and Turkey.

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Italian membership thus demonstrated that a state did not have to be geographically ‘North Atlantic’ to qualify as a member, and that belonging to a prevalent idea of Western Europe also figured in gaining membership. Italy was an emergent democracy and an important part of the Western European economy, as well as a participant in classical greatpower politics in pre-war Europe. It is impossible to imagine Italy being included in the North Atlantic Treaty if it had somehow avoided defeat in the war and retained its Fascist regime, or followed a Francoist path of wartime neutrality. The fact that Franco’s Spain was vetoed as a member for precisely these reasons, despite its manifest strategic advantages, is the most powerful evidence of this. Despite all this, it seems very possible that these considerations would not by themselves have proved decisive in 1948–9. The factors that were decisive were the Italian request for membership and the sudden support of France, rather than the strength of the case itself. The stepping-stone states In contrast to Italy, the importance of these states was never really in serious question, especially once it was agreed to set up a North Atlantic Treaty. The transatlantic guarantee would have been impracticable without them, and its psychological impact would therefore have been considerably diminished, perhaps fatally so. This is illustrated by the fact that once the idea of the North Atlantic Treaty had been firmly adopted in the Washington Paper, what opposition there was to the inclusion of these states evaporated. Only France quibbled, and this was more of a negotiating device by which the inclusion of Italy (itself largely an instrumental ploy by France) might be assisted. The stepping-stone countries were crucial strategic points in the Atlantic and Northern Europe, and their ‘loss’ (military or political) would have had grave strategic implications. That their relationship was more instrumental than essentialist is shown by the early idea of limited membership. They were not envisaged as part of joint military planning, but rather as the sites for bases, etc. Moreover, it was at least as important to ‘deny’ these states to the Soviet Union as it was to secure them for the West. There was, then, a certain negative value in their accession, as well as positive strategic attributes. Strategy and politics It is hard to see how any of the new signatories to the Treaty could have significantly increased the material military capabilities of the WET powers. In fact, the inclusion of Italy arguably lessened it, bearing in


mind the limitations imposed by the peace treaty. None of the signatories had access to any great resources that could conceivably help with the military deficiencies of the original parties, and three (Norway, Denmark and Italy) were themselves in the throes of post-war recovery. Like their new allies, they were consumers rather than producers of security in material terms, and were in no position to make a meaningful contribution in terms of materiel. Moreover, it is also possible that the inclusion of these states would place a significant strain on the resources of other members. Norway, Denmark and Italy were all, to one extent or another, unguaranteeable; they were the recipients of a territorial guarantee which would in fact have been very difficult for the guarantors to put into practice without either overstretching their resources and fundamentally redrawing the strategic vision of the Treaty. For these reasons it seems fairly clear that the aims in including these states were not really concerned with calculations of material military advantage, or with the territorial defence of these states. This should not really be surprising: war was not the prime threat, but rather subversion and disintegration. In this sense the North Atlantic Treaty was designed to ensure cohesion and togetherness, and it is in the issue of geostrategic position that we find the most pressing membership criteria. It thus seems clear that simple geostrategic logic is the overwhelming factor in understanding the inclusion of the stepping-stone countries. The case of Italy is less clear, but it also illustrates some competing strategic visions. The stepping-stone countries all fitted a clear idea of what a North Atlantic system would require in order to be strategically effective, while Italy was more obviously a part of a Euro-centric or Mediterranean strategic system. As such it would seem more ideally suited to either the Brussels Pact or a Mediterranean arrangement, neither of which were realistic possibilities. For now, it needs to be noted that the instrumental aspect of the Treaty is again hinted at in Italian entry. Italy was a geostrategically important state, but in a different way to the stepping-stone states: the North Atlantic strategic concept would not be seriously impeded if it was not included. Its entry was driven by other factors, but does show the North Atlantic Treaty being used as a sort of geostrategic tool, and moving away from a clearly defined idea of where its natural geostrategic epicentre really lay. How important was it that the new signatories were democracies? This is a difficult subject, which was made easier by the fact that, with the exception of Portugal, it was not necessary to make a choice between democratic and strategic criteria. Nonetheless, there was an inherent

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tension between the ends and means of the North Atlantic Treaty. On one hand, it was designed to protect a basically ideological process of reconstruction and was thus closely related to the liberal-democratic project. On the other, this was to be achieved via a strategic military guarantee, and this exerted its own non-ideological pressures. The case of Portugal is one where the latter factor won out: where means overrode ends. However, that Portugal was included while Spain was not indicates that there were types of non-democracy. The difference was that Franco was regarded as the last remnant of European Nazism–Fascism, the political force that had overturned democracy and order in the 1930s. This is the key to understanding Spain’s exclusion, and to restate the point made above, it is inconceivable that any of the other signatories would have been admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty had they possessed similar regimes. Italy is, in a way, a mirror of the Portuguese case: this was an instance of a state whose ‘European’ credentials were stronger than its strategic ones. The Italian case does clearly show that the negotiators had hopes of consolidating democracy in new signatories. How this was to be done is unclear, but was related to bolstering pro-West elements by international political and economic support. Marshall Aid was the obvious conduit for this, but the extension of the North Atlantic Treaty to this area was also an element in the same policy. This does illustrate the close ties between the two projects, and the abrupt end of support for Italian membership after the DC election victory also shows that securing the political orientation of Italy was, if anything, more important than its strategic orientation for some WET parties. Therefore, the maintenance of political rather than territorial integrity was at the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty. This explains why Portugal was included and Spain was not: Portugal’s history indicated that its domestic regime was unlikely to have a damaging effect on the political integrity of the North Atlantic Treaty. Spain’s history under Franco indicated very different. To maintain political integrity and cohesion meant, in the last analysis, dealing with ‘people like us’. In summary therefore, the North Atlantic Treaty membership reflected the fact that the Cold War that generated it was a strategic and an ideological conflict. Its ideologically homogeneous aspect is most clearly evinced in the membership of the original negotiations: the parties at the WET talks shared a very clear set of strategic, ideological and political concerns. However, their decision to pursue security via military–strategic means had a defining effect on the eventual membership of the Treaty. Not only that, but the fact that all signatories


joined on the same basis, with the same guarantees and responsibilities, was to have unforeseen implications very shortly after the North Atlantic Treaty was signed. No allowance was made for the fact that the term ‘North Atlantic’ is a concept as well as a geographical expression, and neither its strategic nor political boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. The eastern boundaries of this concept ‘shaded off’, rather than ended, and the fact that this found no expression in the treaty meant that some of Kennan’s (unheeded) warnings about membership would prove well founded. It was for this reason that NATO’s first tranche of formal enlargement came at a time and place that were not of its own choosing. This was the accession of Greece and Turkey, the subject of the Chapter 3.

3 The Accession of Greece and Turkey, 1947–52

The purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty was to underwrite European reconstruction via a military guarantee, and therefore the military nature of the pact was only a means to a political end. The Treaty expanded from its core of Brussels Treaty members to embrace the transAtlantic members and those strategically important states without which the guarantee of the US would have little practical meaning. The roles and identities of members – and, by implication, their reasons for membership – were varied but fell broadly into two groups: those who adhered to the core set of, broadly speaking, politically homogeneous states (such as Britain and France), and those who fell into the more strategically oriented category (such as Portugal and Iceland). At this very early stage, there was little or no sign of any tangible organisational structure to the Treaty, although this would be addressed in the very near future. At its outset, though, NATO remained essentially an arrangement on paper, and it is likely that the full strategic implications of the North Atlantic Treaty, particularly the adherence of the periphery, had not yet sunk in or had been put aside. The establishment of those diplomatic and military structures which would give practical expression to the North Atlantic Treaty – adding the ‘O’ – is evidence of the deepening sense of confrontation and tension that characterised the Cold War in the period immediately after the signing of the Treaty. Both Cold War tension and adding the ‘O’ had an important impact on the enlargement of NATO to Greece and Turkey. The states had both been considered but ruled out as members during the Treaty negotiations, although they had lobbied hard for membership since the signing. Significantly, the Treaty itself had to be rewritten to allow the accession of Turkey. Article Six, which specified the geographical range of the 62

The Accession of Greece and Turkey, 1947–52 63

common defence guarantee in Article Five, had originally stated that an armed attack on the Alliance would be deemed to be ‘an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America’. After the accession, the phrase ‘[or] on the territory of Turkey’ had to be added. Spain and Germany, both viewed as likely future members, would not have required any such revision upon accession. This is clear evidence that Turkey was not considered a potential NATO member when the Treaty was signed, and that the decisive factors in accession became apparent after that time.

Greece, Turkey, and the West, 1947–51 That Greece and Turkey were of importance to the US and to the developing Western pole of the Cold War should be in little doubt. By virtue of the presence of US forces and aid in the region, and the philosophy of the Truman Doctrine which contextualised this presence, the US at least was already explicitly committed to the maintenance of the Greek and Turkish status quo.1 The key to understanding Greek and Turkish membership of NATO, then, lies less in understanding the extension of a commitment by NATO members than in the formalising of the commitment of NATO’s definitive member, the US. This section will look at the process by which that commitment was extended and formalised. Both Greece and Turkey have a long-standing history of involvement in the dynamics of European security, not to mention a long-standing enmity between them, but their positions in the immediate post-war years contrasted. Greece, invaded and occupied during the Second World War, emerged from the war only to become the site for a particularly bitter and destructive civil war which brought ‘disaster to a degree hardly paralleled elsewhere in Europe’. Greece has perennially suffered problems of national cohesion, and the civil war polarised Greek political life into monarchist conservatives and communist guerrillas. In effect, Greek political life was an echo of the developing bipolarity in European international life.2 Turkey, on the other hand, possessed a socio–political coherence that Greece lacked, as well as a very different cultural identity and background, and thus it would be a mistake to treat NATO’s first two post1949 members as a homogeneous pair. Kaplan notes that the US ‘identified Greece as an arena of international conflict rather than as an ally in the struggle’, while Turkey was precisely the reverse.3 Understanding the pursuit of NATO membership by these two states necessitates a brief analysis of their post-war politics.

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Turkey With its Ottoman past a recurrent feature of European state politics for several centuries, particularly during the nineteenth-century decline of the Empire, Turkey’s involvement with Western Europe has been a long and troubled one. The history of this relationship has been described as ‘confrontation, antagonism and mutual indifference, dislike or misunderstanding’. This uneasy relationship, fuelled by power politics, imperialism and cultural differences, has produced a divide that persists to this day. Given this difficult history, the incorporation of Turkey into an alliance comprised largely of states with which it had historically tense relations seems anomalous. It is perhaps tempting to dismiss Turkey’s clear desire to join NATO as driven by the changed strategic imperatives of the Cold War, and it is true that the logic of strategic balance played a significant part in Turkey’s accession to NATO. However, it would be misleading and one-dimensional to regard this as the sole causal factor. In fact, the Turkish desire for NATO membership finds its historic roots in the inter-war period.4 The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 under the charismatic leadership of Kemal Atatürk, who immediately instigated a programme of radical socio–political change within the new state. Atatürk and his successor Inönü aimed to create a modern industrialised state and, until the rise of the US to superpower status, modernisation was closely identified with Europe. Six basic principles (known as the Six Arrows) worked to form this policy: nationalism, secularism, democracy, statism, reformism (i.e. modernisation) and populism or social justice. The growing political identification with the West was not only a feature of the modernisation drive, but also featured in security policy: a belief that ‘Turkey had been vulnerable to threats from Europe because it lay outside Europe’. The widespread acceptance of Atatürk’s principles was at the root of Turkey’s consensus on foreign policy, in which the goals of independence and Westernisation were intertwined. In fact, the entire democratisation programme of the 1950s had a strong foreign policy element to its rationale. Váli claims that ‘the national goal of Turkey is to be . . . a member of the European community of nations and an equal in status, civilisation and prestige’.5 Turkish foreign policy during the inter-war period was neutralist and concerned chiefly to preserve the independence of Turkey rather than to manipulate the system in one direction. This underwent a radical change immediately after the war. The critical factor in this change was the Cold War, with two aspects of particular importance. First, while


suspicion of Russia had long been a feature – perhaps the defining feature – of Turkish foreign policy since the Ottoman days, the threat perceived to be emanating from the Soviet Union after the war had a qualitatively different nature. The years since the establishment of the Turkish state had seen a sustained effort towards modernisation on the Western model. Thus the Soviet Union and its own defining politico–economic features seemed to pose a threat of a nature that the old Tsarist Russia had not. Like the European NATO members that it aspired to join, Turkish fear of the Soviet Union was about losing political as well as territorial integrity.6 Second, as the polarising effects of the Cold War became clear, the non-aligned neutralism of the inter-war years was no longer an option, as had been the case with Norway and Denmark previously. Váli argues that ‘in such a dichotomous world, Turkey could not hesitate about where to place her destiny’.7 The increasing tensions of the Cold War lent an added urgency to Turkey’s desire to strengthen its relationship with the West. Turkey’s application to join NATO then, was due to a complex set of factors, and was both instrumental and essentialist. It was instrumental in that it would guarantee US economic and military aid and allow Turkey to spend more on internal development than on military forces; it was essentialist in that it denoted acceptance and equality with the West, of which Turkish views were somewhat paradoxical. The radical post-war change in European security produced a corresponding shift in the nature of Turkish foreign policy, and this helps to explain the historically anomalous character of this shift. With the European state system no longer self-contained, the idea of the West was no longer identified so closely with Europe and instead had become closely linked with the US.8 In response to this and the structural pressures of the Cold War, it became necessary for Turkey’s Westernisation policy to be recast, and thus Turkish NATO membership was about more than a strategic military guarantee. As well as the promise of Article 5, NATO entailed signing up to the West. Joining the Alliance therefore represented not only a security guarantee, but also admission to the complex web of US–West European political, economic and diplomatic relations. It represented an intensely political definition of ‘Europe’. Greece Turkey’s post-war concerns were in contrast to those of Greece, which over an eight-year period had been at war with Italy, with Germany,

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with Bulgaria, and finally with itself. The politically divisive effects of the civil war in particular meant that by 1949 there were questions not only over the security of Greece vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, but over the long-term political stability of the country. Like Turkey, the Greek state also had a history of troubled relations with the state system of Western Europe, the Greek pattern of relations was of a different nature. Whilst the Ottoman Empire had exploited systemic rivalry to its own advantage, Greece had traditionally been at the mercy of systemic dynamics. Couloumbis notes that Greece ‘has had to participate in numerous alliances during its recent history’, always with a Great Power.9 The dependence on outside influence was the first key difference between Greece and Turkey, the second being the relative socio– political incohesion of the Greek state. Veremis has argued that ‘it is impossible to speak of the Greek state as though it were an immutable entity’. This weak sense of identity was exposed by the bitter nature of the 1946–9 civil war, and by the ‘mutually exclusive bipolarity’ (i.e. conservative vs. communist) that dominated Greek political life in this period. It is for this reason that Greece came to be viewed by the US as ‘an arena of international conflict rather than an ally in the struggle’. For Greece itself, the problem was a ‘legitimacy crisis’ – the pre-war order was discredited, the wartime one had collapsed, and in the aftermath the remnants of stable political life polarised into factions. Thus the support promised by the Truman Doctrine was vital: Couloumbis notes that ‘the Truman Doctrine meant that a new breath of life would be blown into the tiring government’s efforts to prevent Greece from becoming Communist’.10 By 1949 and the framing of the North Atlantic Treaty, the political situation within Greece had stabilised in favour of the political right. The regime was heavily dependent on financial and political aid from the US after the catastrophic damage wrought by the civil war. For the nationalists who now controlled Greece, the purpose of this aid was to underwrite their political position, and to guarantee Greece against territorial incursion (Greece was disputing territory with Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia). It was, in other words, very much a continuation of historic Greek foreign policy. The pursuit of domestic cohesion and territorial integrity in Greece had traditionally depended on guarantor states and on the dynamics of security in Europe, and both priorities required assistance from the US if they were to succeed. Moreover, the ideological aspect of the emerging European security system – the division into more or less homogeneous camps – meant that the identity


of the guarantor state was important to Greek nationalists in a way that differed from the old system. The polarisation of Greek politics helped to make this choice a clear-cut one: with Greece divided into communists and conservatives, the prospects for a third path between East and West was always likely to be remote. Hence, allying Greece explicitly with the US and the Western group became of almost axiomatic importance.11 Greece, Turkey and the West Clearly both Turkey and Greece were keen to move closer to the group of European states coalescing around the US in the developing Cold War, and to gain some assurances from the US similar to those encapsulated in the North Atlantic Treaty. The assumption by the US, in the Truman Doctrine, of an international responsibility formerly shouldered by Britain was important in that it highlighted the beginnings of containment, and placed responsibility for ensuring that Greece and Turkey remained within the anti-Soviet circle firmly with the US. This was to have important ramifications later on, since it meant that the US had primacy in deciding how this role was to be fulfilled. In November 1948, the US JCS had defined US strategic interests in Greece and Turkey as (a) ensuring that the Greek military could maintain an internal order favourable to the West; and (b) maintaining the capability of the Turkish military to resist Soviet political pressure and possible military attack. This position, which clearly illustrates the different definitions of how each state was threatened in the Cold War, was adopted as a basis for planning the following year.12 Neither Greece nor Turkey was seriously considered as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, although Turkey had a 15-year treaty with Britain and France. There had been no protracted debates about including Greece and Turkey such as those that took place over Italian membership. The importance of Greece and Turkey was never understated, but their significance to the US at this time was centred on the political situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and hence the Middle East and oil supply. They were therefore not considered to be intrinsic to a political concept of what constituted Europe, but rather were important strategic outposts of a region critical to Europe. The US aid to Greece was to prop up the Western-oriented government there, but the military presence in Turkey was driven by US military strategy. Over the period 1949–51 the pattern of US policy towards the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East was becoming clear. The aim of containment was always to cut off the expansion of Soviet influence

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and maintain the political allegiance of certain key areas. In the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, this aim was increasingly coupled with the objective of bringing key states into ‘a US-led orbit in order to ensure that they would cooperate strategically in wartime and allow Western corporations to develop and control their petroleum resources in peacetime’. In war planning, the US war plans BROILER and HALFMOON both involved use of Middle Eastern bases in a war with the Soviet Union; in peacetime, military aid would allow Turkey to spend less on defence and more on economic priorities. In short, US policy in this area was becoming more and more closely linked with strategic military factors. To use Melvyn Leffler’s phrase, ‘diplomacy was becoming the handmaiden of strategic planning’.13 Both Greece and Turkey had been appealing for admission to NATO since the days of the WET negotiations, but without success.14 Their resentment at this exclusion was heightened by the inclusion of Italy, and both states maintained their lobbying for inclusion after the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. It will be recalled that opposition to the inclusion of Italy was partly based on the argument that Italian membership would make it difficult to reasonably exclude Greece and Turkey. In fact, at one point the US had assured the Turks that Italy would not be admitted to what was a geographically-based treaty, and that Turkish inclusion would therefore be similarly unsuitable. The fact that this was true at the time – the French volte-face being unforeseen – did little to soothe Turkish feelings of betrayal when Italy was eventually included. Turkey lost no time in making this point to the US: the Turkish Ambassador discussed the matter with Acheson less than a month after the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty.15 Bearing in mind the desire for Westernisation in this country, it is easy to see how refusal by NATO not only thwarted Turkish security policy but also the most fundamental aims of the Turkish state. Moreover, rejection served to confirm the Turkish suspicion that NATO members did not regard them as equals, exactly as those who opposed Italian entry had feared. In 1950, Turkish pressure was increased in two ways. The first of these was the decision to send 4500 Turkish troops to Korea. This came very soon after the outbreak of the war, and Harris notes the underlying reason for the decision: ‘from the first, the Menderes government recognised that the Korean gambit offered the opportunity it was seeking to force the gates of NATO’. The second was a much more direct approach: on 1 August Turkey made a direct appeal for NATO membership to Britain, France and the US, in the form of an aide-mémoire requesting that ‘our present close collaboration be


brought to contractual stage’, and specifically urging that the US ‘see to it that measures [are] taken to examine and resolve the question of Turkey’s admission [to the] Atlantic Pact system with minimum delay’. At the same time, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Köprülü, published an article in the New York Times, which stated that Turkish public opinion regarded NATO entry as ‘the acid test’ of US interest in Turkey.16 This comment by Köprülü hints at a ploy that would be used to great effect later on. It was an implication that ‘public opinion’ might conclude that the US was not in fact interested in supporting Turkey, and this might force the Turkish government to pursue security by other means than alignment with the US: in other words, to adopt a neutralist policy. This was instrumental in the eventual US decision to support admission to NATO. The actual initiative for Greek–Turkish membership came from Greece and Turkey themselves, rather than from the US. However, to restate an earlier point, Greek and Turkish pressure for admission was nothing new. Even when we allow for the cumulative effects of constant and increasingly vociferous lobbying, it is clear that other factors were also at work in this accession. In particular, we need to ascertain why the US decided to sponsor admission when it did, rather than earlier. The factors that impacted on the US decision, and on allied acquiescence, are examined in the following section.

The rise of confrontation culture The US lobbied virtually alone for enlargement, over (at best) misgivings and (at worst) genuine opposition on the part of other members. Thus it seems reasonable to suppose that the logic of enlargement is to be found largely in US motives. Moreover, by 1950 the US had taken on almost sole responsibility for the preservation of the political and strategic status quo in the Eastern Mediterranean, and therefore the means by which such a policy was to be prosecuted were defined by the US itself. Containment, the defining characteristic of US foreign policy during the Cold War, has been described by Gaddis as ‘a series of attempts to deal with the consequences of that World War II Faustian bargain’, the alliance with the Soviet Union. The aim of the policy was ‘to prevent the Soviet Union from using the power and position it won as a result of that conflict to reshape the post-war international order’. Both the US and the Soviet Union aimed at reshaping the international order in images of their own construction, and therefore containment should be seen as concomitant with other US initiatives such as the Rio Treaty and

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the Bretton Woods agreement. Our concern here is to unravel its changing nature. Containment aimed, by various methods and at various places, at preventing states from moving into the ‘Soviet sphere’, and was as much a philosophy as a policy. The key change in this policy between 1949 and 1951 was over where and how this philosophy was to be implemented. The change was encapsulated in the NSC document NSC-68, which was designed to provide a comprehensive framework for US policy formulation towards the Soviet Union, the Cold War and to communism in general. The very fact that such an all-embracing framework was deemed necessary is itself evidence of the way in which official thinking in the US government was moving.17 NSC-68’s central arguments were that the US must be able to ‘block further expansion of Soviet power’ and that the US was becoming dangerously inferior in its ability to do this. ‘Containing Soviet power’, moreover, now meant containment of Soviet power anywhere, not just in selected vital areas. In Gaddis’ words, ‘NSC-68 derived its view of American interests primarily from its perception of the Soviet threat . . . It found in the simple presence of a Soviet threat sufficient cause to deem the interest threatened vital.’ This has crucial implications. It meant that the threat had become both panoramic and indivisible; a view stated in NSC-68 in the single sentence: ‘In the present polarisation of world power, a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.’ In other words, the Cold War had become global in scope, with all areas inter-linked. This was the beginning of ‘domino theory’, of the hardening of distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and of what may be termed ‘confrontation culture’.18 This confrontation culture was of a different nature to earlier ideas about containment. The traditional criteria for assessing the value of allegiance and the seriousness of threat were more tangible standards such as geography, economic capacity or military potential, and these were always more susceptible to ‘bean-counting’ and material analysis. By 1950–1 this set of accepted criteria had widened to include the more elusive and value-laden factors of prestige and credibility: ‘In the process of shifting outward from the European core, the Cold War acquired an ever-expanding roster of intangibles.’ The addition of more intangible factors meant that the areas to be defended had dramatically increased and that distinctions between them were blurred.19 The notion of the indivisibility of threats meant that concerns with the periphery assumed an importance that hitherto had not existed. Gaddis notes that a distinctive aspect of NSC-68 was its assertion that


there need not and should not be distinctions between peripheral and vital interests. A threat to the periphery was by implication a threat to the centre. This does not mean that Greece and Turkey were peripheral interests, but they were on the periphery of what could reasonably be deemed the European arm of the US orbit. The significance of the above discussion for Greece and Turkey lies in the indivisibility of threats. The logic is two-fold: first, if Turkey and/or Greece were to fall to the Soviet Union (whatever that often-used but vaguely-defined term might mean) then this would have serious knock-on effects for the rest of the Middle East and Europe. Second, even if Greece and Turkey did not reorient themselves to a pro-Soviet stance, the prevalent view in the US government was that the two states might instead opt for a neutralist course. In the orthodoxy of the time, this would be almost as bad. Acheson stated in January 1952 that the Soviet Union aimed irrevocably to ‘force the maximum number of non-communist countries to pursue a neutral policy and to deny their resources to the Western powers’. This gives an insight into both the reasons for concern over neutralism and the prevalent view of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. If Greece and Turkey opted for a neutralist foreign policy (which had been threatened) then they would effectively be lost to the West; the concept of ‘benign neutrality’ was scorned.20 In Gaddis’ words, ‘a victory for communism in a particular country might not, in the long run, be a gain for the Soviet Union, but it was certain in the short run to be a loss for the United States’. A ‘victory for communism’ need no longer be communist government; neutralism could be little different. The Cold War system was hardening: allegiances needed to be as wide and as firm as possible. It was for this reason that Greece and Turkey took on such enhanced importance in the early 1950s. Their significance to the West was already demonstrated through the Truman Doctrine, but now their allegiance needed to be unmistakably formalised. Leffler notes that ‘Truman instinctively believed that the Soviets wanted to overrun Iran, gain access to Middle Eastern oil, and find warm-water ports in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean’. Thus the US had to protect this region: it must, according to the logic of NSC-68, use a strong alliance system to impose order.21 The chance of direct war with the Soviet Union, at least in Europe, was still considered unlikely in the short term, although the British Chiefs of Staff (CoS) feared that Korea might be simply a diversionary tactic to distract attention and resources from an attack on Europe. The

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key effect of the Korean War lay in what Leffler calls ‘the diplomatic shadows cast by strategic power’. Acheson argued that Soviet military power, as evinced by the Soviet atom bomb test and indirectly by Korea ‘weakened the confidence of Europeans in the Atlantic community and jeopardised their alignment with the United States’. As a consequence, military affairs took on a heightened prominence that dominated political ones, particularly on the periphery of the industrial–economic centres of power. Leffler notes that ‘Truman, Acheson and their advisors had the lessons of the 1930s very much on their minds. The Soviets were on the march; they were seeking world domination; they were now prepared to use tanks and heavy armour to subdue their foes.’22 To summarise, a picture is beginning to emerge. Greece and Turkey both continued to press for a stronger, more formalised relationship with the West after 1949, but now the US was undergoing a significant change in the way it thought about its Cold War policy. The precepts of NSC-68 markedly expanded the perimeter of interests, and the impact of Korea produced a greater preoccupation with military and strategic questions. The intertwining of these two can be seen in a CIA Review of March 1950, which noted that ‘They [the Soviet Union] would also hope to divest the US of its allies [and] its forward bases . . . before the final showdown came’. Therefore, whilst Greek–Turkish pressure on the Alliance had increased, it had not fundamentally changed. The key change was in Washington: the US was now peculiarly receptive to such pressure, and consequently we would expect the pressure to produce a different response.23

NATO strategy and adding the ‘O’ At the same time that the US was revising its view of the Soviet threat, and preparing to act upon this revision, NATO itself was undergoing a process of development. Over the period 1949–51, the Alliance began to move from being a diplomatic agreement to becoming an organised military institution – the ‘O’ was being added to the NAT. The most significant development here for understanding the accession of Greece and Turkey was the first attempt to define and implement a strategy for the Alliance. The defining principle of this strategy was forward defence, agreed upon in September 1950. It will be recalled from Chapter 2 that one of the defining rationales behind the North Atlantic Treaty was the need to create assurance that the US would be involved in a future European war from the very outset.


With this written into the Treaty, the implications of this purpose emerged. It would not be enough for the US simply to promise to be involved: the key principle in the new strategy was that NATO members must be defended as far to the East as possible, rather than liberated as in the Second World War. In short, the prospect of another D-Day was unacceptable.24 The strategic implications of this were far-reaching, and in purely military terms, the whole concept of forward defence had serious limitations. The British CoS pointed out a widely held belief when they argued that the strategy was militarily ‘unsound’. With the conventional forces available, the prospects of holding a Soviet attack across the Rhine were deemed to be slim. With liberation ruled out, the concept that arose was termed ‘bottleneck Europe’. In practice this meant a strategy designed to hold the flanks of a Soviet attack, and use this as the basis for a counter-attack. The possibility of actually succeeding in holding or repelling an all-out Soviet attack for any great length of time looked minimal: the aim was to hold for long enough to allow the US nuclear attack to take effect. The significance of this for Greece and Turkey is that they represented the southern flank of such a strategy, and thus it became of increased importance that they were explicitly committed to the West and now to the Alliance. Eisenhower, NATO’s first Supreme Commander, Europe (SACEUR), saw the Mediterranean as a southern flank of the mainland: ‘something between a moat and a highroad’.25 The inclusion of France, Italy and Algeria had of course already given NATO an important interest in the Mediterranean, but as long as the North Atlantic Treaty remained only a paper guarantee this was more latent than apparent. Once an active strategy for the Alliance was devised and (more importantly) began to be implemented, then the strategic implications of the Mediterranean became harder to avoid. In particular, Turkey possessed two strategic advantages of key importance. First, it lay across the Turkish Straits, the only access point by which the Soviet Union could enter the Eastern Mediterranean. Second, it lay between the Soviet Union and the Suez region. This gave it obvious importance to the supply of oil to Europe, but NATO’s emergent strategy added to this. In these early stages of strategic war planning, great reliance was placed on the effect of a US atomic air attack on the Soviet Union. A proportion of this air assault was to be launched from the Cairo–Suez area, and would be severely jeopardised by a Soviet advance through

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Turkey. Leffler notes that Turkey had ‘a special role’ in US strategy as ‘a key to the effective application of air power’, especially in the light of conventional land inferiority in West Europe. In 1946, US planners had decided that, other than Britain, ‘the Cairo–Suez area was the most desirable place on the globe from which to launch an air attack against Soviet targets’. The subsequent war plan BROILER put Cairo–Suez at the centre of a US air attack on the Soviet Union, with Turkey as a cushion, resisting the Soviet advance while the US launched its air offensive.26 It was therefore of prime importance, from both an air and a naval perspective, that Turkey should enter an East–West war from the start. It is here that the prospect of neutralism caused the greatest concern: the fact that Turkish willingness to cooperate with the West was becoming ‘increasingly suspect’ was a cause for escalating concern.27 It is also significant that, from late 1950, NATO created a joint military planning organisation, and also agreed to establish standing forces in being. Both of these prompted the establishment of a command system by which the strategy would be put into place. The forwardstrategy decision had raised the inevitable questions of conventional force levels and German rearmament, both of which are dealt with in Chapter 4. For the purposes of this chapter, it must be borne in mind that the debates about Greek–Turkish admission took place in the midst of protracted and confrontational debates about conventional force levels and German membership of NATO. Greece and Turkey were not the only issues on which the European members were under intense US pressure, and Chapter 4 shows the intensity of this pressure and the strong feelings that the issue generated. Thus two intra-Alliance factors had an impact on the Greek–Turkish question. First, the Alliance, like the US, was confronting difficult questions about strategic points on the periphery. Second, Greek–Turkish membership was discussed simultaneously with one of the most bitter and intractable debates in the Alliance’s history. The issue of Greece and Turkey raised strong misgivings, but Germany raised real fears.

The accession decision Accession decisions are always made at a full Ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), and these decisions are made by consensus rather than majority vote. Clearly therefore there is a political interest in ensuring that consensus is reached before the final NAC meeting. Consensus on Greek–Turkish admission was built in three key fora. Within NATO, the Council of Deputies was of central importance.


The Council had been set up in May 1950, and met in permanent session. This was the primary conduit through which diplomats voiced the positions of their governments, but also through which the weight of intra-Alliance opinion could be brought home to governments themselves. This two-way process clearly utilised the ‘NATO method’ that had been so valuable in the WET negotiations.28 The second forum was the tripartite discussions between Britain, France and the US, the three key actors within the Alliance. Their influence was decisive, particularly as regards strategy, and it is therefore not surprising that they discussed as much between themselves as with their allies. Other NATO members would be reluctant to block a joint position by the US, Britain and France, and therefore it is to be expected that consensus-building would likely begin with these three. These tripartite discussions took place at the Foreign Minsters’ meetings of the period, and within NATO at the Standing Group. Until the appointment of SACEUR and the establishment of military institutionalism in the form of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), the Standing Group exercised almost sole de facto responsibility for the formation of NATO strategy. Political considerations did, however, mean that the three could not be seen to be running NATO policy (for example, the communiqués of the tripartite Foreign Ministers’ meeting immediately prior to the Ottawa NAC mentioned their agreed policy on Germany, Austria and Italy, over which they had special jurisdiction as occupying powers, but made no mention of Greece and Turkey, over which there had been both discussion and decision).29 Associate membership, September 1950 Greece and Turkey joined the Alliance in two stages, the first of these being the decision in September 1950 to associate them with NATO military planning. The initiatory factor in this was the direct Turkish approach to Britain, France and the US in August 1950. Like the Italian approach in 1949, the fact that an actual request had been made presented problems associated with the potential consequences of refusal. Turkey’s main approach had been to the US, Britain and France. However, the US had been mulling over its security commitments in Greece and Turkey for some time prior to this, and the associate membership idea originated in Washington. Three factors were at work in the formulation of US policy. The first of these, which we examined

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earlier, was the increasing preoccupation with the periphery. In February 1950, a State Department report highlighted ‘the question of freedom from fear of aggression by states bordering on the Soviet sphere’, specifically Greece and Turkey. Korea and the logic of NSC-68 only reinforced this concern.30 Second, the US was bearing the brunt of Turkish pressure for a binding commitment. The inclusion of Italy and French Algeria in NATO had given an unavoidable impression in Ankara and Athens that Greece and Turkey were of lesser importance, and also meant that Turkey especially was unlikely now to be satisfied with anything short of a full treaty commitment. Moreover, the State Department in the US was reluctant to offer the strategic collaboration required by US military planning without formal treaty commitments. Thus Washington was itself seeking a way to formalise its military relations with Turkey: these relations needed to be institutionalised to have the air of permanence.31 Third, the US was at the same time uncertain about the form such a relationship was to take. The three alternatives were a bilateral agreement with Turkey and Greece, a Mediterranean and/or Middle East Pact, or NATO membership, and the first two of these were highly problematic. Both would be difficult to restrict to Greece and Turkey, and Congress would be unhappy with a Mediterranean pact if its sole purpose was to bring Greece and Turkey into the Western defence system. On top of this, the chances of a Mediterranean pact, which would include the Arab states and Israel, remaining cohesive or stable were slim.32 Moreover, a Mediterranean Pact would have the disadvantage of including some NATO members – for example, Italy and France, but not others. This raised the question of what would happen in the event of a Mediterranean conflict: would the Pact members who were also NATO members consider this an Article 5 situation and invoke NATO’s guarantee? If so, this raised the prospect of NATO members, and NATO as an organisation, becoming involved in a conflict outside the original idea behind the Alliance.33 This left NATO as the least problematic option, but the US JCS were flatly opposed to full Greek–Turkish membership at that time. However, this was based primarily on timing rather than principle. The JCS argued, with NATO’s political and military institutionalisation still very much in its infancy, that admitting new members would not be beneficial. Therefore, after studying the issue through the summer of 1950, the JCS and the State Department reached a consensus that admitting Greece and Turkey was undesirable at the time, but they should be asso-


ciated with NATO military planning, on similar lines to the ‘goats’ idea floated at the WET negotiations.34 This plan presented a number of potential advantages. First, it meant that Greece and Turkey would not in fact be full members, and therefore the decision would not be subject to the ratification process, which was likely to be difficult in some member states. Second, it would bypass the need for new pact arrangements to be set up. Third, it would mean only coordination of military planning, and thus would not mean complicating the construction of NATO’s command structure by adding an East Mediterranean/Middle Eastern dimension. This plan for an institutionalised working relationship between senior military planners was put to the British–French–US Foreign Ministers meeting, and to the NATO Council of Deputies, in September 1950. The Foreign Ministers approved the idea as ‘the least bad choice’, and thus the support of the two key European and Standing Group powers was secured.35 The Deputies’ meeting the following day also gave approval, despite some opposition from the Netherlands, Norway and Canada. These three opposed the plan on the grounds that admitting Greece and particularly Turkey, even in associate form, would change NATO ‘from a closely knit community to [a] widespread anti-Soviet alliance and seriously weaken it’. However, they were unwilling to veto the scheme, and with political and military support thus secured, the NAC agreed the following month.36 Before moving to the decision on full admission, however, three things need to be noted. The first is the addendum to the NAC decision, which stated that Greece was only to be invited to associate membership once Turkey had already accepted an invitation. This is a clear indication that the two were clearly regarded as a pair, but also that Turkey was the more important of the two. Second, US policy was clearly for full Greek–Turkish membership. This had already been implied by the JCS, but Acheson also recognised that Turkey would be dissatisfied with associate membership, and that the idea could be ‘no more than a delaying device’. The Defense Secretary, Johnson, concurred and argued for Greece and Turkey to be reconsidered as full members when the defence of West Europe was assured.37 The policy of the US after associate membership had been agreed was three-fold: to oppose, for the time being, full admission and any alternatives by which the US would be required to guarantee Greece and Turkey, and to reconsider admission to NATO when the organisation’s

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development had proceeded further. By August 1950, then, the US regarded Greek–Turkish NATO membership as a question of timing rather than principle. Thirdly, it seems clear that, for the US in particular, Greek and especially Turkish membership was driven by strategic military factors, in contrast to the Turkish objectives of assimilation with the West.38 The US decision and the allied reaction Acheson’s sense that Turkey would not be content with associate membership was prescient: Turkish pressure for full admission only increased. If, after August 1950, it was increasingly a question of timing, then by early 1951 it seems clear that that timing would not be of Washington’s choosing. In February, the Turkish President, Bayar, stated in fairly stark terms that Turkey’s whole foreign policy orientation might have to be re-thought if a firm US guarantee of support was not forthcoming, and the Turkish Ambassador also warned that ‘once the Turkish Government had made it known publicly that a request had been made for admission to NATO, a dangerously bitter mood could emerge should the request be turned down’. This was the most open declaration of potential neutralism yet, and was taken very seriously by the State Department. The same month, the CIA National Intelligence Estimate backed this by arguing that ‘the commitment of Turkish troops or the provision of Turkish bases would be contingent upon a firm assurance of US armed support in the event of Soviet armed attack’.39 The Turkish case was that they were being asked to coordinate their military planning with that of the US and the other NATO members, thereby making themselves a target in a future war, but with no guarantee of reciprocal assistance. Why should they provoke the Soviet Union by such a move? Turkey had after all successfully maintained its position during the Second World War, and even if its chances of doing so in a Third World War were slim, they were not as slim as they would be under associate membership of NATO. This argument had sunk the original ‘goats’ idea in 1948, and the fact that it was resurrected is further evidence that the US at least regarded it as a strictly temporary measure. Leffler notes that the logic of this argument was sufficiently irrefutable to gain wide support in the US during 1950–1, and by February it appears as though the US felt it had little choice but to act. We have seen that the State Department and the Pentagon supported the idea in principle, and that the problems were thought to lie in the underdeveloped state of Alliance institutionalisation, and in how long Turkey


could be put off with promises. In short, the US position was always contingent upon these two factors. Between March and May 1951, the State Department, the JCS and the NSC discussed the issue, and by early May had concurred that Greece and Turkey would have to be admitted into NATO. The possible alternatives – bilateral Pacts and a Mediterranean Pact – were again considered and dropped. Acheson noted in his memoirs that ‘the absence of any feasible alternative’ to NATO membership was the deciding factor. The issue now, therefore, was to persuade the other allies. Informal Anglo–American talks had also taken place, at which it was made very clear that only full NATO membership commanded the support of both the State Department and the Pentagon, and on 15 May, the US delivered an aide-mémoire to London and Paris, announcing that it now favoured full admission of Greece and Turkey.40 Opposition to Greek and Turkish membership had not changed in its two main themes. The first of these was directed more forcefully against Turkey than Greece, but its central thesis was that the Alliance was founded on political homogeneity as well as strategic logic. Greece and particularly Turkey were not seen as a part of this like-minded group, and it was argued that admitting them would dilute that aspect of NATO and thereby seriously undermine it. An FO Minute from June 1951 notes that the political objectors fear that the long term objectives of strengthening the bonds between the North Atlantic countries will be left behind in the effort to turn NATO into an anti-Russian machine. They clearly regard Turkey and Greece as completely alien to the present character of the Alliance. This view was put particularly strongly by Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. The implication here was that the coherence of NATO would be seriously jeopardised if such an important cornerstone was to be weakened. This unease had helped generate the concept of associate membership, discarded during the original Treaty negotiations. Its short-lived resurrection was therefore in part an attempt to ‘preserve the ideological purity of the Alliance while securing wide geostrategic advantages’; in other words, an attempt to have the cake and eat it.41 The second objection to Greek and Turkish membership was put on strategic grounds. To extend an Article 5 guarantee to Greece and Turkey would mean undertaking a commitment to defend them in the event of war, and several strategists were quick to point out that deterring an

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attack on Greece and Turkey was one thing, but treating them as integral to the central front of Europe created grave practical problems. These disadvantages concerned the effects on defence planning if Turkey were to be drawn into a European system under SACEUR. Turkey was important to European defence, but for many its natural strategic sphere lay more in the Middle East/Mediterranean than in the European central front. In this perspective, the appropriate vehicle for a US guarantee would be a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern Pact, drawn up along similar lines to the North Atlantic Treaty. The US had of course already considered and rejected the alternatives. It was therefore in a position to readily refute these arguments.42 However, the intra-Alliance opposition was highly contingent in nature. It was evident from a very early stage that the British attitude towards Greece and Turkey would be of decisive importance. After the NATO Council of Deputies meeting that immediately followed the US démarche, the British Deputy informed the Foreign Office that ‘for most of the European countries, and perhaps also for Canada, the attitude of the UK will be the determining factor, and a firm lead by the latter in support of the US might well turn the scales’.43 London had foreseen the likely US position before the announcement via the aide-mémoire, and some exchange of views with France and also Canada had taken place prior to the US démarche. In anticipation of the US step, the British government had already looked into the military implications of Greek–Turkish admission. A report by the British CoS had concluded that the military advantages of accession, mainly centring on East Mediterranean defence and bolstering Turkey against the Soviet Union, outweighed the disadvantages. Despite the support of the British military, the British government remained unconvinced. At the Anglo–Canadian meeting in April 1951, a common view emerged that both states shared a common view that Greece and Turkey bore little political relation to the NATO members, and that their accession would therefore tend to turn NATO into a group of states who had little in common with each other apart from being anti-Soviet. However, this concern was outweighed by a concern not to cut across the bows of the US on the matter: Britain would remain opposed to Greek–Turkish admission only until it became clear that the US intended to support accession.44 It was noted after the Anglo–Canadian meeting that it was doubtful whether the Americans could in fact (from the point of view of Congress) give any additional commitment to Turkey except in the form of admitting her to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation;


and if this becomes their firm policy, we would probably not want to oppose the admission of Greece and Turkey . . . We shall only support admission to NATO if the Americans press for it. This was compounded by the fact that the US démarche rapidly became public knowledge in the US. It was therefore pointed out that ‘we should try to avoid a position in which we successively oppose the American proposal, incur widespread public criticism, and finally agree to it under American pressure’. Thus Britain’s position began to shift immediately after the American aide-mémoire. Henceforward it was a case of how Greek–Turkish accession was to be managed. France shared the British and Canadian unhappiness with the idea of full membership, but was much less willing to reconsider if the US pressed the point. Support elsewhere within the Alliance for the admission of Greece and Turkey was very limited: apart from Italy, with its Mediterranean concerns, the US argued virtually alone for enlargement. This case was put in the face of misgivings on the part of most members and open opposition in the part of others. The concept that Greece and Turkey were important to NATO members was in little dispute; neither was the importance of the US guarantee to the two states. What was in dispute was the desirability of admission to NATO, but the eventual decision was clearly emerging: the US had come out in favour of admission, Britain was unwilling to oppose the US, and the other members were waiting on the British position. Towards Ottawa From June 1951 onwards the bulk of discussion was concerned with establishing consensus on how Greece and Turkey were to be drawn into the Alliance. Britain had swiftly abandoned its opposition to admission, and the most vocal opposition still came from Holland, Norway and Denmark, all of whom expressed doubts about the political commonalities (or lack of them) between the North Atlantic states and Turkey, and on the strategic wisdom of extending the NATO guarantee into this region. However, it was becoming clear that none of these states would be prepared to veto a solution if a majority supported it. The task therefore was to find a solution that would somehow reassure doubters whilst fulfilling US and Turkish aims.45 A report by the UK Deputy indicates the level of consensus: • ‘Greece and Turkey should be more closely associated with the defence of the West.’ • NATO should ‘ensure that Greece and Turkey would react to an attack

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on the West in the same manner as the North Atlantic Treaty nations.’ • ‘The association of Greece and Turkey should be brought about by means of formal political arrangements between these two countries and all or some of the North Atlantic Treaty nations.’ • Bilateral arrangements ‘would not in the present circumstances be practicable means of associating those two countries with Western defence.’ • Any decision ‘should take full account of the importance of maintaining the concept of the Atlantic community . . . and of the need for ensuring that the efficacy of NATO operations and the efficiency of NATO machinery should not be impaired.’46 These conclusions were very much a compromise. It was accepted that, for NATO, the aim was to ensure that Greece and Turkey would respond to a war in Europe in the same way as NATO members, and that current arrangements and bilateral treaties were insufficient to achieve this. However, the final point about the preservation of the Atlantic community idea was clearly included at the behest of those who opposed membership. The point about the efficiency of NATO machinery is also clearly a nod to the concerns about the effects of moving NATO’s military reach out of Europe and into the Middle East. With these considerations in mind, the Deputies were agreed that only two solutions were feasible: Greek–Turkish membership of NATO, or a Mediterranean/ Middle East Pact ‘closely linked’ to NATO. During June 1952, the British and US CoS, together with the Standing Group, put together a plan along the lines of the latter option. The idea was to admit Greece and Turkey to NATO, but in a separate command which would include the US, Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and possibly Egypt. This command would be closely linked to NATO, but without being a part of the SHAPE system under SACEUR. Therefore, Greece and Turkey would join NATO but without militarily committing all members beyond the European Central Front, and the US would enter into the defence system of the Middle East (a key aim of British foreign policy).47 This plan was put to the Deputies during July 1951, and a further study was requested on the implementation of these command arrangements. The Deputies set up a Working Group to investigate this and report back. Five factors were involved in the subsequent talks that took place during summer 1951. First, Turkey in particular was highly unlikely to be satisfied with any arrangement that did not hold out the prospect of


full NATO membership, and not all members were fully appreciative of this fact. In July the British Foreign Office noted that ‘Holland, in particular, just does not accept the argument that Turkey would not be satisfied with a Mediterranean arrangement if that were all she were offered’.48 Second, Turkey lay across more than one strategic region. Because of its territory in Thrace it was a part of the southern-flank European central front, but was also a part of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East regions. If Turkey were to be a member of NATO and a Mediterranean/Middle East Pact, then its forces might effectively fall between two stools. If it were solely in NATO, this would extend the responsibilities of SACEUR, and thereby NATO members, into the Middle East region, where very few other than the Standing Group states had any substantial interest. Eisenhower, as SACEUR, had stated that it was ‘militarily impracticable’ for Turkish forces to be included under SHAPE: they must, he argued, be in a Middle East Command with ‘a close liaison’ between MECOM and SHAPE.49 Third, there was the question of who would head the commands in the Mediterranean and Middle East, particularly if SACEUR would not be the overall commander.50 Fourth there was the issue of Article 5. If Turkey was attacked, would all or only some of the other NATO members be obliged to go to its aid? Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands were all concerned that Greek–Turkish membership would extend their military commitments to the East Mediterranean and Middle East.51 Fifth, to what extent should command arrangements be worked out prior to accession? Turkey and Greece, with US support, argued strongly that their command arrangements and responsibilities were a matter to be dealt with after accession, when they would have an opportunity to participate in talks. Clearly Turkey in particular was concerned at being handed a fait accompli. Conversely, many of the other NATO members argued vociferously that they and their Parliaments would be unable to properly consider the Greek–Turkish accession without a clear idea of the likely command arrangements. The concern here was with obtaining a picture of where their military commitments would lie, and how far they would be extended.52 The negotiations of these questions were protracted and sometimes Byzantine, with Britain and France in particular pursuing other agendas. France used the debate to try to obtain a French appointment to a new Western Mediterranean command, since it seemed that the Mediterranean might be divided up on geographical lines (i.e. West and East)

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rather than functional ones (air, land and sea forces). Britain meanwhile was attempting to obtain a separate Middle East command, under a British appointment as commander. Both Britain and France considered themselves to have special interests in the Mediterranean and Middle East, which they were anxious to have taken into account. By the time of the Ottawa NAC meeting in September 1951, the Standing Group had had time to respond to the Deputies’ request for more information, and had reached agreement that, if Greece and Turkey were admitted: • A Middle Eastern command would be needed for Turkish participation (i.e. Turkey would be inside NATO but outside SHAPE). • Greece could be included under SACEUR. • A new post would be created, Supreme Allied Commander Middle East (the unfortunately-acronymed SACME) who would effectively wear two hats, reporting to SACEUR on matters concerning Europe, but to ‘another body’ concerning the Middle East, as some NATO members would not wish to be associated with command outside the central front. This arrangement would relieve them of military involvement.53 This report, which was in most essential respects the Anglo– American/Standing Group plan of the preceding June, was handed to a Foreign Ministers’ meeting immediately prior to the Ottawa NAC. By now there was a clear tripartite consensus that Greece and Turkey would have to be full members of NATO, France having abandoned its argument that the Middle East Command must be under the Standing Group. This was most likely due to the increasing gap between MECOM and SHAPE as it became clear that Turkey would insist on being under SACEUR.54 However, the Deputies had been unable to reach an agreed position by the time of the Ottawa NAC, despite Acheson’s longstanding insistence that a decision must be made at the meeting. The NAC therefore received only a Working Group report, which stated that all Deputies concurred on the need for a closer association with the West, and that membership or semi-membership via a Mediterranean arrangement was needed. It is therefore clear that the Deputies had made little real advance on their collective position at the end of July. With no clear recommendation from the Deputies, the NAC meeting saw a repeat of the national positions. However, while the position had not changed since July, it was also true that the conditional nature of opposition had similarly remained constant. Britain would not oppose


the US; others would either follow the British lead or would not block a majority view. Thus when Acheson led off the debate with a strong US argument in favour of admission, the writing was very much on the wall. The US, Britain and France therefore supported full membership for Greece and Turkey, and as a result serious opposition was not forthcoming from the other members. The only vocal opposition came from Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. The latter two had already indicated prior to Ottawa that they would not block a majority decision. Norway had always indicated that it was ‘open to persuasion’, on the grounds of reluctance to block an Alliance decision, and a natural awareness of the strategic importance of NATO’s flanks.55 This left Denmark, always among the strongest opponents of Greek–Turkish membership. The Danish government, as the Danish Deputy explained, was keenly aware of the level of public support for NATO membership in Denmark. A great deal of this support rested on the idea of the Alliance as a political community rather than a military alliance. To admit Greece and Turkey would be viewed as strengthening the latter at the expense of the former, and could have conceivably serious consequences. The danger, as it was expressed, lay in that the Danish Parliament would not ratify Greek–Turkish membership, and if it did, this might lead to a marked decrease in public support for Danish membership (as well as the international political fall-out arising from the collapse of an accession decision).56 The Danish Deputy told his British counterpart that ‘a considerable body of opinion in Denmark . . . had never approved of Denmark’s membership of NATO’, and looked on the Alliance as basically antiRussian. However, this consideration was insufficient for Denmark or its allies to block a decision. It seems unlikely that Denmark or the other members saw a serious likelihood of ratification failing in the Danish Parliament. The consequence of such an eventuality would have been the derailing of the whole accession process. It thus seems unlikely that Denmark would have agreed to accession if non-ratification was a serious possibility. After consultations with the government in Copenhagen, Denmark’s representative at Ottawa acquiesced, and the die was cast. Greece and Turkey were therefore invited to accede to the Alliance with no strings attached. Consensus was emerging among the Standing Group about how they were to be incorporated, but in the end the US had got what it wanted at Ottawa: full Greek–Turkish membership without any binding conditions about how the US was to be involved in Middle East defence. Turkey in particular was admitted with little

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clear idea of the exact arrangements for command. Greece was a clear case for SACEUR, but Turkey presented unique problems. As we saw earlier, Turkey was not intrinsic to the working of the North Atlantic strategic system in the way that the stepping-stone states had been in 1948–9, and moreover was arguably more important to the Middle Eastern strategic area than it was to the southern flank. As such its accession was more concerned with ensuring strategic adherence than with the overall nature of the system. The debates about command therefore continued after the Ottawa meeting. In fact, the issue was not fully settled until August 1952. While the Deputies agreed on a Protocol for admission (drawn up by the US, and covering both admission and the revision of Article 6) that would be submitted to parliaments for ratification, some attempt was being made to obtain command arrangements before ratification took place. This was for much the same reasons that some members had been unhappy with discussing admission without a picture of command arrangements. Denmark and the Netherlands in particular were keen to have some idea of how command would be arranged before ratifying. Their concern was that they might be presented with a fait accompli later on, and it seems likely that this arose from the fact that they were not members of the Standing Group. Because of this, their input into command talks would be curtailed once ratification had passed, and therefore they were keen to take a last chance to substantially influence the command question. However, three factors made this impossible. First, there was still a dispute among that Standing Group about the final shape of command arrangements. Second, the US was disinclined to allow anything to block full Greek–Turkish admission as soon as possible. And third, Turkey and Greece themselves were reluctant to engage in talks on their own command responsibilities before they became full members. There was general agreement that Greece should be included under SACEUR, but considerable disagreement about the place of Turkey. Both the Standing Group and SACEUR considered Turkish inclusion under SHAPE to be militarily unsound, but Turkey was insistent on being included under General Eisenhower’s European command.57 Eisenhower informed the US JCS that including Turkey in SHAPE would be ‘militarily impracticable’, but Anglo–US–Turkish discussions showed that the Turks ‘were insistent that their nation be considered an inseparable part of the Europe that is facing Russia (not as a Middle East nation on a parallel with the Arab states)’. This was the overriding reason for Turkish incorporation into SHAPE and the agreement to set


up a separate MECOM. In fact, Turkish aversion to being considered a Middle Eastern state at these talks was strong enough to prompt an unsuccessful request for the Middle East Command to be renamed the Eastern Mediterranean Command. Moreover, Turkey also insisted that the proposed Middle East command would not include the territory of Turkey: this was to be guaranteed by NATO. This meant that the MECOM was increasingly becoming an organisation in its own right, with its link to NATO becoming more and more tenuous. By November, both the US and France had decided that MECOM would have to be separate from NATO, and Britain was obliged to abandon its position. At Lisbon in February 1952 therefore, it was agreed that Greek–Turkish ground forces would come under SACEUR through CINCSOUTH, and their air forces would report to the Southern European Command. The question of naval command, bound up as it was with the wider question of Mediterranean strategy and command, was put off, and Greek–Turkish naval forces remained under national control for the time being. This was no great hardship: the value of Greece and Turkey as strategic points and as suppliers of ground and air facilities was secured.

Conclusions In conclusion therefore, the admission of Greece and Turkey to NATO marks a key period in the development of the Alliance. This enlargement had the logic of military security heavily in evidence, and in this way it was part of the same process that had brought about the inclusion of Portugal and Iceland in 1948–9. However, the enlargement was prompted in large part by developments since the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, and therefore this comparison has limitations as an explanation for the admission of Turkey and Greece. Three key factors help to explain the admission of Greece and Turkey so soon after the creation of NATO. The first of these is the spread of the security net beyond its origins in the European industrial and political heartland. It was deemed important to create a multilateral framework encompassing as much of Western Europe as possible (as evinced by the clear plans for future German and Spanish accession, and also the somewhat optimistic hopes for Switzerland and Ireland to join). The thinking on membership at this early stage involved a reasonably clear concept of who constituted ‘us’ in the dichotomous environment of early Cold War Europe, and was based around ideas of political and economic homogeneity or a sort of Western essence. This concept became

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diluted and somewhat blurred by the addition of states such as Iceland and Salazar’s Portugal, but nonetheless it was important if not definitive. After 1949 the thinking on the nature of the Cold War system began to undergo identifiable change. This was particularly marked in the US, and involved a perception of the Cold War, and thereby East–West rivalry, as global in scope. The implications of this were to become apparent in the arguments of NSC-68. The range of what was to be secured widened and produced a corresponding shift in perceptions of who ought to have a place under the American umbrella and thereby who ought to have a place in NATO. As well as this widening of scope, a concomitant development was a hardening of ideas about allegiance. Essentially this meant an increasingly dim view of both neutralism and ambiguities in allegiances. To put it simply, if prosaically, anyone who was not part of the solution would, ipso facto, be part of the problem. Thus allegiances needed to be as clear-cut and as formal as possible, and while this had always been the case within the Alliance, the changed world of 1951 spread the NATO net wider. Secondly, the perception of how to be secure took on a changed meaning in the light of widespread interpretations of events. Military security was becoming something of an end in itself, and this generated different views about how NATO should achieve its security objectives. For Greece and Turkey this meant a markedly increased strategic value to the Alliance. This was probably not definitive, since their real value to NATO was rooted in the widening spread of security policy, but should not be downplayed as a result. In essence, Greece and Turkey needed to be defended and tightly linked to the Western fold, and this came to mean that they needed to be militarily protected. NATO’s significance here is of (a) the most unmistakable example of a US security guarantee, and (b) itself a going concern, with a fledgling bureaucracy and military infrastructure beginning to take shape. NATO was drawn up to respond to a widely perceived threat; the changed nature of that perception necessarily produced changed conceptions of the Alliance. Finally, NATO was itself undergoing a process of development. Its basic strategic–military rationale was being put into practice, and this itself threw up some issues that the Alliance had so far not been compelled to address. External factors The most influential external development after 1949 was the deterioration in East–West relations and the shift in perceptions of the threat.


The logic of bipolarity became more pronounced as a consequence of this, and thus generated a heightened concern with the periphery of the Alliance. This development raised crucial issues about which states belonged in NATO, and the basis on which membership was offered. In Chapter 2, we saw how membership became flattened down into a ‘onesize-fits-all’ concept, with no allowance made for the fact that the strategic and political boundaries of the North Atlantic could not be firmly drawn. The idea of limited membership had offered a way round this difficulty, but for good political reasons it was quietly dropped. This did mean that difficult questions about where the periphery really lay would need to be faced, but as long as the Cold War was largely conceived to lie in the confrontation in Europe, it was at least possible that such questions could be put off. It was therefore the expansion of the confrontation beyond this region that forced a reappraisal. However, this was not a universally shared view within NATO: only the Standing Group powers possessed the sort of extra-European reach that could produce a blurred distinction between strategic regions, and even those that accepted the need for firmer assurances to Greece and Turkey were dubious about using NATO as a vehicle for doing this. In fact, the main conclusion about the role of external factors has to be that there were very few such factors that impacted on the Alliance as a whole to drive this accession. Rather, it was the impact on one particular member: NATO’s definitive member, the US. Three factors can be identified in the changing US position on Greece and Turkey. First, the events of 1949–50 created an intensified perception of the threat posed by the Soviet Union; the threat became at once more intense and geographically wider in scope. Second, and partly as a reaction to this, the logic of NSC-68 laid out a blueprint for both understanding and responding to this threat. It does, however, need to be noted that NSC-68 was already underway by the time the events of 1950 came along. The deteriorating international scene, which seemed to confirm some of its darkest conclusions, substantially legitimised its outlook and prescriptions but it was in large part designed to offer the US a blueprint for responding to a threat identified prior to 1950. The change in the US outlook in 1950–1 was more a different interpretation of external context rather than a radical change in that context. And third, the intensifying pressure from Turkey forced the US to make a decision that in other circumstances it might have preferred to put off. Of these three, it is the last that seems to have been decisive. The tightening of bipolarity and the adoption of NSC-68 both served to raise

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concern about the security and dependability of the periphery, but by themselves would have been unlikely to drive the US into supporting Greek–Turkish admission. What did drive the US into this was an apprehension that neither state would be reliably Western-oriented without Alliance membership, and the relentless pressure from Turkey stoked this apprehension. We have seen that the threats of neutralism were taken with increasing seriousness in Washington, and that the key month of February 1951 saw this reach a crescendo. This pressure, coupled with the lack of credible alternatives, was the causal factor for the US. What is striking is the disharmony between this and Turkey’s own reasons for wishing to join NATO. The concept of Article 5 and the US strategic guarantee formed only a part of the logic of entry; moreover, the fact that Turkey threatened (apparently seriously) to opt for a neutralist posture if it was rejected suggests a basic confidence that Turkey could find a strategic third way if it were absolutely necessary. However, NATO represented more than Article 5 in Turkish foreign policy. Joining the Alliance was intricately bound up with an entire project designed to recast the very idea of Turkey and Turkishness. Thus the main reason offered for NATO to reject Turkey was the main reason that Turkey desired entry in the first place. Accession was still a political act; but for Turkey the political act provided the foundation: the military benefits could not be separated from the question of political integration. In summary, we can draw a clear line in our assessment of the role and importance of external factors in Greek–Turkish accession. For the US the significance lay in pressure from a prospective member, coupled with a shift in the way they interpreted and responded to external events. These factors were then translated into an intra-Alliance debate in which the US was forced to exert strong pressure on its allies to accept its position. In other words, for the US this was largely an externallydriven accession decision. For the allies, the decision was driven largely by an internal factor: the pressure upon them by their most important ally. Intra-Alliance debate The events of 1949–50 had a more profound impact on the US than on its allies, leading to a significant change in the way security was conceptualised and pursued. Because the US was the key actor within the Alliance, this change soon manifested itself in NATO policy. Therefore, an increased concern with the periphery, a heightened awareness of military security, and a marked distrust of neutralism figured largely


in the US decision over Greece and Turkey. Another was the fact that they were under strong pressure from Turkey. Moreover, by 1950 the US was clearly taking over from Britain as the key Western power in the Mediterranean, and therefore it had a greater say in how the security of this region was to be pursued. When this is coupled with its leadership of the Alliance, it becomes clear that the US would be very hard to resist on this issue. However, the allies themselves were becoming aware, as strategy was implemented, of the problems with the periphery in the Mediterranean and Middle East. NATO was facing the consequences of abandoning the limited membership idea that had been floated at the North Atlantic Treaty negotiations. Because NATO membership did not allow for the shading of strategic boundaries, states that existed on these boundaries inevitably became the object of a starker in–out choice for the Alliance. As NATO’s organisation began to form, questions began to be raised about giving identifiable meaning to its rationale. This process was clearly present in the original Treaty negotiations: in order for the US guarantee to have any practical meaning, the inclusion of Portugal, Denmark and Iceland was a prerequisite. This was followed through in the years immediately following the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in the drawing up of an agreed strategy to give some tangible shape to the Alliance’s function. The strategic concept that was eventually formed, politically driven and arguably militarily unsound, clearly raised the question of the flanks in a way that had not been fully thought through before. Of our factors, then, this is the one that was present from the origins of NATO, and in this way it is possible that Greek and Turkish admission was always an unacknowledged future possibility. This does go some way to explaining the rapid acquiescence of some of the allies; however, the opposition does indicate that many felt that this was not the time to be admitting Greece and Turkey. Why then did they give way so readily? One reason has to be the wider backdrop of what was happening in NATO at the time. When the US was pressing the allies so hard on rearmament and Germany, the question of Greece and Turkey, who would in some way need to be brought into line with NATO planning, looked like a smaller consideration. There were misgivings about Greece and Turkey, but there were genuine fears about Germany and rearmament. A second reason was that the other two major powers in NATO – Britain and France – also had important interests in the region, and therefore were perhaps more disposed to look with less disfavour on the US proposal. Together these three formed the

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Standing Group, which at the time dominated strategic debate in the Alliance to the exclusion of the other members. A third is simply the unique position the US occupied in NATO. So can this position be described as catalytic, hegemonic or imperial? On the imperial side, it is true that the US persuaded the allies to do something that they otherwise would not have done, at least not for some time. It is also true that Washington had already made its own decision, which it then aimed to get allied concurrence with. There was, on the US side, very little room to compromise, and as we saw, it got its way in almost every respect. On the catalytic side, it should be pointed out that a decision on Greece and Turkish security would have had to have been made. Few in the Alliance disputed the importance of the region to their wider security: the doubts centred on the use of NATO as a mechanism to secure Greek–Turkish adherence to the West. Therefore this was not an instance in which the US imposed its own priorities on allies (i.e. the US formalising bilateral relations via a multilateral framework), but rather a case of the US pressing a particular solution to a problem. Of key importance here was the fact that the alternatives – a Mediterranean and/or Middle East Pact – were even more problematic than the Alliance for the incorporation of Greece and Turkey into Western defence. These problems were partly concerned with the difficulty of limiting membership and of maintaining the cohesion of such pacts, but the principle difficulty lay in the simple fact that neither Greece nor Turkey were prepared to participate in such arrangements without first being incorporated into NATO. In the light of this inescapable fact, it is clear that NATO would have difficulty avoiding the inclusion of Greece and Turkey without upsetting the strategic balance in the East Mediterranean. That said, it is similarly clear that without the US to orchestrate the campaign in favour of admission, this accession might well have been delayed or fudged. None of the other allies regarded this as a good idea, and yet the consequences of refusal were potentially severe. With this in mind, the importance of the Standing Group powers is highlighted. Once these three had decided that they would not oppose admission, then the position of the other allies was predictable. This influence appears to have been particularly marked in the case of Britain, but it is also true that all three powers considered themselves to have an important stake in the Middle East and Mediterranean that went beyond that of the other allies. Because of this, admitting Greece and Turkey to the Alliance did not take the international reach of these powers into new areas; the resistance of the


other members was heavily influenced by the fact that their commitments would have been drawn out-of-area. In summary, this accession has some superficial signs of an imperial US role: of the US imposing its own strategic choices onto its unwilling allies. However, this would be a misleading picture. First, the strategic vision of the US was not wholly alien to its allies, since their main quibble was not over the incorporation of Greece and Turkey into Western defence, but over using the Alliance as the vehicle for this. Second, the US clearly made extensive use of NATO’s infrastructure to persuade its allies, rather than presenting them with a demand. It is clear that Washington wanted consensus in place in time for Ottawa, but was careful to use democratic channels to achieve this. The allies deferred to the US not as an imperial power, but as the acknowledged leader of the Alliance. Taxonomy of membership The relationship of Greece and Turkey to the different articulations of the North Atlantic concept was of a very particular type. While both could in fact increase the material military power of the Alliance, this does not appear to have been decisive in their accession. Moreover, an important factor in their own reasons for joining NATO was that it would relieve them of the need to spend so much on defence. It does, however, seem clear that their geostrategic importance was the causal criterion. Both occupied key points in one or more regions, and the possible ‘loss’ of either would have potentially significant consequences. These consequences were both immediate and long-term. In the immediate perspective, NATO’s ground strategy in Europe, air strategy from Cairo–Suez, and naval strategy in the East Mediterranean would have been markedly more difficult without the adherence of Greece and especially Turkey. In the longer term, the zero-sum thinking that prevailed at the time dictated that neutralism was effectively a loss to the West that would have inevitable knock-on effects. Such a perspective dictated that, if Greece and/or Turkey opted for neutralism (more likely in Turkey’s case), or were somehow drawn into the Soviet sphere (more likely in Greece’s case), this could potentially be the beginning of a spreading tendency in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Therefore it was of crucial importance that these states be dependably Western-oriented. How would NATO achieve this? It would do it in two ways. In the first place, the accession was a political act in that it denoted incorpo-

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ration into a bloc in Cold War Europe. As such it was an act that sent clear political signals to the Soviet Union, but also subordinated the new member to a set of political and military rules, agreed on a multilateral basis but largely originating in Washington. Thus clear constraints were placed on foreign and defence policy choices. As Kegley and Raymond have noted, alliances are about commitment and are therefore sets of rules.58 In the case of NATO, these rules delineated clear lines along which state behaviour was meant to move. In the case of Greece, this was clearly aimed at underpinning one faction in the bipolar Greek political milieu. It tied Greece into a wider web by which economic, political and military aid flowed to the beleaguered state. In the case of Turkey, the state’s foreign and defence policy was drawn into the multilateral lines of NATO rather than towards neutralism. Second, strategic planning would be integrated into that of the Alliance. Here Turkey’s geostrategic position gave it a clear utility for the military plans that were being implemented. It should be noted that Turkey was important in a different way to Germany. Without Germany the forward strategy would have been almost impossible to implement in practice; without Turkey it would be compromised and perhaps weakened, but not inherently flawed. Greece was a different matter. From being the key to the Truman Doctrine with Turkey lagging in prominence, it moved to a distinct second place in the debates over NATO membership. Neither was Greece as desperate for NATO entry as Turkey, and in NATO debates the proaccession lobby tended to stress the importance of Turkey in its arguments. Greece, it is true, did occupy an important geographical position on the southern flank, but again was not an indispensable element. It seems to have been admitted to NATO for two underlying reasons. First, it was almost always paired with Turkey: records of the Alliance debates show virtually no suggestion that only one of the two be admitted. Greece therefore seems to have been drawn into the Alliance in Turkey’s wake. Second, Greece was an ‘undecided’ state, one whose Cold War allegiances were not formalised and therefore potentially ambiguous. The bedrock of opposition to Greek–Turkish admission rested on the issue of political homogeneity, and the lack of any substantial discussion of Greek–Turkish membership prior to 1950 underlines their lack of a clear relationship to the political concept of a North Atlantic state. It needs to be stated, however, that Turkey was in fact considerably more democratic than Salazar’s Portugal, and was in the process of further democratisation. Thus the homogeneity principle here seems to be more related to a visceral and somewhat ethnocentric idea of what consti-


tuted a ‘European’ state. However, strategic considerations overrode these arguments. The accession of Greece and Turkey, from the point of view of the Alliance, had little to do with the community concept of the North Atlantic Treaty, at least in the articulation of a group of likeminded states. This is not to deny that it was a political act. Rather, it was about the potential strategic–military consequences of political neutralism. However, none of the advantages or disadvantages of Greek–Turkish accession were significantly different in 1951 than they had been in 1948. Neither had acquired a changed geostrategic position or become democracies overnight. And yet they moved from exclusion to invitees within a two-year period. It seems clear therefore that the keys to understanding this accession became apparent after 1949. Answers are to be found in both changed external circumstances and the development of the Alliance itself. In summary therefore, this was a three-level decision. The US made its own decision, based largely on unavoidable pressure from Turkey. This was a decision which the other two major powers would be wary of, but which was not asking them to take on any commitments they did not already have; the position of the other allies was decisively affected by the position of the US, Britain and France. This was a controversial decision within the Alliance, but it was coterminous with a far thornier issue, one that went to the heart of NATO’s function. This was the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany.

4 The Federal Republic of Germany and NATO, 1949–55

During the first few years of NATO’s history, some clear patterns were emerging in the politics of membership. To begin with, the Alliance had been essentially a pact to underwrite economic and political regeneration among a group of fundamentally like-minded states. This, of necessity, required the membership of other states who did not share the political philosophies of the founders, but who nonetheless were required in order to give the guarantee strategic viability. However, this addition of states whose utility and purpose in NATO was defined by their strategic advantages was still a part of the same process by which the emerging Western bloc in Europe was to be consolidated and protected. The outstanding feature of the Greek and Turkish accession to NATO was that the sine qua non of accession only really emerged after the Treaty had been signed. By contrast, German membership had been envisaged from the very earliest discussions on the North Atlantic Treaty. There were three reasons for this. First, the question of Germany and its orientation in European security was a historically difficult issue, one that had implications for the entire shape of the European security system. Second, the war had left the German state totally defeated and under the occupying control of the Allies. Therefore the future planning of the allies would always involve planning for Germany’s future. Third, Germany as an economic unit was an intrinsic and indispensable part of the wider economic system in Europe, and thus its regeneration carried far-reaching implications. Timothy Ireland, whose work represents one of the foremost attempts to explain the relationship between NATO and the ‘German Question’, makes a useful distinction between ‘philosophical traditions’ in US and European views of the two. The US saw the Alliance primarily in terms 96

The Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–55

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of the Cold War and rivalry with the Soviet Union, and therefore viewed German rearmament in similar terms. In contrast, the European Allies tended to view NATO, and the US commitment that it contained, in terms of their own relative weakness and the potential threat not only from the Soviet Union but from Germany as well. Moreover, Marc Trachtenberg locates the origins of the Cold War itself in ‘the problem of German power . . . A resolution of that problem was the key to the establishment of a stable international system in Europe’. NATO was as much a response to the long-term collapse of the classical European security system as to the Cold War, and the relationship between Germany and NATO was therefore of a different character: this is a unique expansion.1

The ‘German Question’ from top down and bottom up The ‘German Question’ and/or the ‘German Problem’ (the two terms, confusingly, are used interchangeably or to mean clearly different concepts) represents one of the defining features of the European security system, and was instrumental in the collapse of the pre-1945 order. It is important to stress that there are in fact two ‘German Questions’. The first is concerned with how Germany fits into the European security system without destabilising it; the second with the unity of the German nation and the kind of political system which unites it. There is of course a clear link between the two: the domestic political system of the German state has important effects on Germany’s foreign policy, and the nature of the European international order impinges upon social views of Germany’s place in Europe and hence upon German politics.2 To take the external dimension first, Germany has historically exercised a powerful and sometimes decisive effect upon European security. This is for two reasons, neither of which is susceptible to significant change. The first of these is its political and economic size. A united Germany is inevitably a powerful state, owing to its access to resources and raw materials, its highly industrialised economy and its sizeable population.3 This material base of power has clear implications for Europe as a whole. It means that the prosperity and stability of the German economy is a necessity for the wider European economy to function with similar prosperity and stability. Moreover, this size means that Germany will always have the ability, potentially or actually, to implement its foreign policy with a large degree of autonomy. This is not to say that Germany cannot help but

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threaten, but rather that an insecure German state is bound to possess the capacity to pursue security through forcible means. For example, post-First World War Germany was deprived of its empire, its Kaiser and was crippled by reparations, but the sources of its power – its industrial base, its territorial integrity and its population – remained intact. Crucially, the terms upon which the peace settlement was based engendered a potent sense of grievance and injustice within German political culture.4 A second inescapable factor is Germany’s geographical position. As well as being geographically central in Europe, Germany has historically lain across geostrategic fault-lines within the continent. Ash has described this as a ‘unique geopolitical dilemma’, although he also points out that Poland has faced a similar geopolitical position but has a radically different history to Germany. This underlines the fact that not all of Germany’s history can be attributed to geopolitical facts of life or systemic forces.5 Thus a unified German state is inescapably powerful, influential and (in more ways than one) central within Europe: Germany would never be peripheral in any sense of the word. It is often argued that Germany was too large to fit easily into the classical European system, but not large enough to establish overlay or hegemony in the way that the superpowers did. The classical system presupposed the absence of the German state and the fragmentation of the German nation: it had grown up in Germany’s absence, and was ill-equipped to absorb the new state. Put simply, Germany could not easily find a place in such a system without destabilising it. Therefore, post-war security questions were inevitably bound up with the question of Germany, and with how the European security system could be redefined to allow Germany to operate within it.6 This interplay between Germany and the European system has been compounded by the indistinct nature of German identity. Germany has historically lain across political, social and cultural boundaries, and consequently the sense of what ‘Germany’ is, and who ‘Germans’ are, has been problematic. Alain Clement, for example, has argued that Germany was unified before the Germans themselves. Moreover, the legacy of German history for Germans, at least until 1945, was profoundly ambiguous. Deutsch and Edinger note this ambivalence: ‘dictatorship and war were remembered by perhaps three fifths of the German people as terrible failures, but democracy and peaceful international relations were not at all widely remembered as successes’. In a


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1948 poll, for example, 57 per cent of Germans said that Nazism was a good idea that had been badly carried out.7 This historical background to the issue of Germany has important implications for post-war policy and the accession of Germany to NATO. In the first place, the size, power and position of Germany make it a definitive actor in European security: the ‘German Question’ is a systemic question. Second, the whole issue of Germany was concerned with the management of German power: it was necessary to rearrange the workings of international relations in Europe in such a way that German power could be safely and stably incorporated. Third, a crucial question for West European stability was the utilisation of this power by the Germans themselves. In Bertram’s words, ‘Germany has to use its weight and power wisely as well as confidently. Its inability to do so in the past created the German Question in European history’. Therefore, 1945 was ‘an historical caesura’ for Germany.8 The authoritarian strand in its history was discredited and its future was controlled by foreign powers with good reason to distrust Germany and the Germans. For NATO, membership would be concerned with security from Germany itself, as well as from the Soviet Union; it would have to guarantee a stable incorporation of German power. Germany, like Spain, was considered as a future member of NATO at the WET talks, one to be admitted ‘when the time was right’. However, Spain was to be excluded from the Alliance until its internal regime had been removed. In contrast, Germany in 1945 did not have a ruling regime of its own. It remained under Allied occupation, and was not really a state in its own right. This was one reason for the delay in admitting Germany into NATO. Another was that the Alliance at the time was only a treaty guarantee, with no institutional apparatus for the management of power. The paradox was that Germany was vital to European recovery and prosperity, but was also capable of overturning stability within Europe. This dilemma was at the heart of NATO membership. Two factors were decisive in forcing the issue onto the Alliance agenda. These were the establishment of the West German state in 1949, and the NATO decision to adopt the forward strategy during 1949–50.

The creation of the West German state George Kennan, whose arguments on the necessity of securing centres of military industrial power were so influential in US containment policy, remarked that: ‘There is no solution to the German Problem in

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terms of Germany. There is only a solution in terms of Europe.’ If we recall the mutually exclusive ideas on European reconstruction held by the ascendant superpowers, it seems fairly clear that a division of Germany was going to be inevitable. Certainly it is hard to see how the Western Allies and the Soviet Union could conceivably have reached agreement on such a critical issue as Germany, in the light of their irreconcilably opposed views on political and economic philosophy. It was a clear choice between pursuing German unification or integrating the US–British–French occupied zone into the Western European recovery, between a unified but neutral Germany, or a divided Germany whose western portion would be structured as the Western allies wished. As the Cold War structure was imposed on Europe, the two became mutually exclusive.9 Anton DePorte has argued that the division of Germany represented a solution to Europe’s ‘German Question’, the best available solution. First, the rigid alliance system of the Cold War lent a corresponding rigidity to the European state system. There was very little room for manoeuvre between the emerging blocs, and so the shifting alliance patterns that proved so unstable in the past could not be re-established. Second, to belong to one bloc in bipolar Europe unmistakably delineated a state’s allegiances: belonging to the West European pole in the Cold War was, increasingly, a long-term acceptance of certain norms. Third, the overlay of the US meant that a key cause of instability in the system – the difficulty of defeating a militarist Germany by the European states alone – was no longer prominent. In summary, the Cold War structure in its various forms imposed boundaries and restraints that had hitherto been difficult to establish, and arguably could not have been provided by other means.10 Thus the Federal Republic of Germany was not the creation of a programme for Germany, or a considered plan to reform the German state, but was in a sense inadvertent. It was the product of Cold War dynamics, and as such was unusually prone to the influence of its Cold War superpower sponsor. Moreover, this defining factor of Cold War dynamics meant that the Federal Republic was likely to be a part of the emerging pole that created it, rather than moving to a neutralist position. As Berghahn notes, this meant that ‘the reintegration of Germany into the community of nations thus came to mean reintegration of the Western Zones of Occupation into the Western world’.11 The German government shared this view. Adenauer’s policy was to resolve the historic alienation of Germany and the West by integrating the Federal Republic as closely as possible with the norms and values –


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domestic and international – of the West in the Cold War. Michael Stürmer argues that ‘the only opportunity left to Germany [after 1945] was to play the Western game, to be the most European nation among the Europeans, and to translate Germany’s geostrategic position into political negotiating power’. There were ‘two ladders out of the morass’: a firmly European orientation, and an alliance with the US. Verheyen identifies two key facets to Adenauer’s vision: first, supranationalism and the abandonment of a unilateralist concept of foreign policy, and secondly Westernisation and German rehabilitation. These two fused in the accession to NATO. The Alliance represented a way to not only guarantee the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic, but also to transcend historic security tensions via multilateralism and security dependence on NATO.12 Adenauer was elected in 1949 with only a slim majority. This was important, because while he dominated West German foreign policy during this period, his ideas reflected elite thinking rather than general public opinion. Adenauer favoured Western integration over reunification, believing that the latter would be a consequence of the former, but German public opinion had a stronger yearning for the divided state to be reunited, and was never favourable to the idea of rearmament. This was due to a distrust of militarism and a growing awareness that a war would now mean that Germans would be fighting Germans.13 This sometimes made Adenauer’s position difficult, but did give him a certain bargaining power with the Allies. He was also under heavy pressure to regain sovereignty for the Federal Republic, and here mass and elite opinion were more in accord. Adenauer’s Westernisation policy was driven principally by a belief that this represented the future, but was also partly a virtue of necessity. He recognised that the Allies would only relinquish their hold over German sovereignty when they were satisfied that this sovereignty would flow via institutional channels. Adenauer’s policy was therefore to set up a quid pro quo with the Occupying Powers: Germany would agree to rearmament in return for a restoration of its sovereignty. This trade-off of military contributions for sovereignty and equality was later to be at the heart of dispute over German rearmament. For Adenauer, Germany’s contribution had to be on equal terms with those of its allies, and he was strongly opposed to any scheme that attempted to institutionalise a position of inferiority.14 Moreover, Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which defined the area covered by the territorial guarantee, stated that ‘the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over . . . any area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the


date when the Treaty entered into force’ were included in the NATO guarantee.15 In other words, the treaty covered the occupying forces in Western Germany, even if German territory was not, and therefore the three Western-occupied zones were effectively included in NATO. However, this would apply only while Germany remained an occupied territory rather than a sovereign state. This explicit inclusion of occupied Germany is clear evidence of the imminence of division and the creation of the Federal Republic. West Germany became a semisovereign reality in September 1949, and with this the restoration of full sovereignty, and the expiry of Article 6’s applicability, became inevitable. With the forward strategy based on holding a line no further West than the Rhine, the inclusion of this territory became necessary. In this sense, therefore, German inclusion was simply a way to preserve a strategic status quo. Rearmament, however, was another matter entirely. For example, the British Foreign Office noted in May 1950 that Until Western Germany can be trusted politically and permitted to rearm, her security must depend on (a) the presence of Allied troops in Western Germany, (b) the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty . . . This state of affairs is likely to continue until Western Germany has shown conclusively by her actions that she is prepared to cooperate with the West and has been accepted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. There is a clear sequence implied here: Germany must first prove that it could be ‘trusted politically’, after which NATO membership would be the next step. Only after this would rearmament be ‘permitted’. However, circumstances were to force a change in policy.16

The forward strategy and rearmament Robert Osgood argues that the war in Korea ‘did not so much change NATO’s strategy as make its full implications explicit’. This means that as long as the threat posed by the Soviet Union was more political than economic, then the military implications of the territorial defence principle, laid down in Article 5, could to an extent be avoided or at least put off. The rise to primacy of the military dimension of the threat clearly meant that those implications needed to be addressed. NATO strategy had to be designed so as to guarantee territorial defence, not territorial liberation. In Lerner’s words, Europe had become ‘a


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single military terrain’. This was the foundation behind the forward strategy.17 The forward strategy was eventually agreed upon in September 1950, with a very simple founding principle: to defend Europe as far to the East as possible, and no further West than the River Rhine.18 Since the front line would be in Germany, which would soon no longer be covered by Article 6, and since the strategy required large numbers of conventional troops, the strategic implication were very obvious: Germany would have be incorporated into the NATO system, and it would have to make some form of contribution to the collective military build-up. This was an inescapable fact that many of the NATO allies would have preferred to put off: the views of the British Foreign Office, cited above, can safely be taken as a representative sample of allied opinion on German rearmament. However, the markedly increased sense of military inferiority and unpreparedness forced the issue to the surface. It was a paradox of the times that NATO’s military transformation was both the catalyst and the barrier to German rearmament: rearmament and integration required a German contribution, but similarly a German contribution necessitated an integrated structure if European fears of an armed Germany were to be allayed. There is therefore a close inter-relationship between the forward strategy, NATO’s military institutionalisation and German rearmament: the forward strategy necessitated centralised command and a German component, but NATO’s structural development also accelerated German rearmament and sovereignty.19 It required a US initiative to force the issue onto NATO’s agenda. Melvyn Leffler, whose work represents the most comprehensive investigation into US national security policy during this period, notes that from 1949 onwards, German rearmament was, for the US, a matter only of timing, not of principle. It was agreed that the best method would be for Germany to ‘be enlisted in a European Army which would not be subject to the orders of Bonn but would follow the decisions reached in accordance with the North Atlantic Treaty procedure’. This clearly shows the relationship between the German accession and the institutional development of the Alliance. A German contribution was to be secured in the form of a European defence force under the direction of a Supreme Commander (who would be an American) and the Standing Group. It was clearly stated that, when a Supreme Commander was appointed, ‘it should be possible to integrate into such a force German units in a controlled status without thereby creating a German army’. In other words, Germans, but not Germany, would be rearmed.20


This was put to both Anglo–US–French tripartite meetings and the NAC in the form of a package deal that, to some of the allies, verged on blackmail. A substantial increase in US forces to the Continent would be supplied, on the assumption that allied forces would also be increased. These forces would be drawn into an integrated European Defence Force in NATO under a unified command and an international staff, with a German contingent to be added. Two aspects of this proposal stand out. First, the package was in effect a quid pro quo: the US contribution would be contingent upon acceptance of the rest of the package, including German involvement in the unified command under SACEUR. Second, the package made no mention of Germany actually joining NATO. It sought agreement only to a German contribution to the defence effort, to be handled via an Alliance framework.21 The September NAC saw the European allies pulled in two different directions. On one hand was the enticing prospect of forward defence with an increased US military presence in Europe, on the other a corresponding demand for markedly increased European defence spending and the looming prospect of German rearmament. General Collins of the US Army remarked that: ‘In my opinion as a military man . . . the people of Western Europe, with our assistance, and given time, can build up a sufficient force so that they would not be driven out of Western Europe. Now just exactly where they could hold . . . is in the laps of the gods.’ The Dutch in particular were appalled at the idea of holding at the Rhine, and argued strongly for the line to be much further East. Dirk Stikker of the Dutch government recognised that this would unquestionably necessitate a German contribution.22 Denmark and Norway also recognised that ‘without a German rearmament there would be no possibility of moving the defence line eastward from the Rhine, which meant that Norway and Denmark would be uncovered’. The debate also resonated in Germany. As early as December 1949, Adenauer stressed that ‘profound disquiet’ was being created in Germany by NATO’s hesitation about where to place the line of defence, and was heightened by the war in Korea. In July 1950, the British Foreign Office noted that ‘the Korea War has brought the defencelessness of Germany to the notice of the Federal Republic and the West Germans. They are aware that at present we cannot protect them or indeed Western Europe from a Russian attack.’23 In fact, the other allies were aware of what the US was likely to propose at New York, and many were also beginning to face the military realities of the forward strategy. For example, the British CoS had stated in a report that ‘we cannot build up the necessary strength to


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ensure the defence of the NATO powers without the participation of Germany’. Moreover, the Netherlands had also long recognised this, while remaining convinced that Germany should have no armed forces of its own. The Dutch viewed NATO as vital in allowing the rehabilitation of Germany and recognised, as did Belgium, that the forward strategy could not be implemented without Germany. It was therefore a question of confronting realities and then formulating a policy to deal with them. As Truman bluntly pointed out, the entire forward strategy stood or fell on a German contribution: Without Germany, the defence of Western Europe was a rearguard action on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. With Germany there could be a defence in depth, powerful enough to offer effective resistance to aggression from the East . . . Any map will show it, and a little arithmetic will prove what the addition of German manpower means to the strength of the joint defence of Europe.24 The military case for a German contribution was both pressing and unanswerable. The US tactic was to force this to be recognised and then to offer the potential solution. As McGeehan points out, however, if the external threat had been the determining factor, then rearmament ought to have been simple; however, external threat was not determinative. Support for the principle of German rearmament was forthcoming at New York, but there was no consensus on what the way forward should be. The communiqué of the meeting acknowledged that ‘Germany should be enabled to contribute to the build-up of the defence of Western Europe’, but promised only to examine ‘the methods by which Germany could most usefully make its contribution’. In particular, the French vetoed the US solution of a European Defence Force, despite heavy US pressure.25 At the heart of the Franco–US dispute was a clash in priorities: the US was reluctant to contribute to an integrated force without prior Allied agreement that Germany would participate, while France could not agree to German participation until an integrated force was in place. Acheson insisted, at both tripartite and NAC meetings, that agreement to the principle of German rearmament did not necessarily mean agreement to the practice, but for France there was little effective difference. At the heart of this French perception was the nature of the Alliance itself. NATO was an alliance in which membership was on an institutionally equal basis. In France, it was simply not an option for Germany to join a unified command, even in principle only.26


The French hung on to this position in the face of tremendous pressure and increasing isolation. After the Dutch, Norwegian and Canadian delegates had put together a compromise resolution, during a two-week recess for the problem to be bounced around the Council of Deputies, the NAC agreed to endorse the defence of Europe as far to the East as possible, and to ‘examine the methods by which Germany could most easily make its contribution’. This compromise would (temporarily) satisfy the US desire for agreement to the principle, but it contained no idea of what the practice would eventually look like.27 However, there was a general consensus, minus France, that NATO was the optimum vehicle for German rearmament to be implemented. Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Italy all indicated that they subscribed to the US study by the close of the New York NAC, and the Defence Committee had concluded that integration under SACEUR would be the best way to secure a German contribution with the necessary safeguards. The reasons for this general support can be related to the forward strategy and to the characteristics of the Alliance itself. With regard to forward defence, it was, as we have seen, very clear that the strategy stood or fell on the contribution of Germany and the US. If no agreement was forthcoming, then there appeared to be a very real risk that the integration and strengthening of NATO forces would stall. Moreover, there was a possibility of the US commitment waning in the face of European failure to agree. As Fursdon notes, NATO had raised the question, and therefore NATO was the appropriate forum to answer it.28 With regard to the Alliance itself, NATO seemed the only real means by which the power of a revived Germany could be feasibly and permanently offset. Recent historical experience had amply demonstrated that this could not be achieved by European states alone, and that the presence of the US was required. This was a decisive factor in the British decision to concur with the US proposal. The link between the US commitment to Europe and allied agreement to German rearmament could be seen as close to blackmail, but also as an opportunity. Dockrill notes that Bevin saw the opportunity to secure a lasting US presence in Europe as ‘the great virtue’ of the package. Bevin also recognised the stark choice: ‘we must either reject the US study [on German rearmament] or accept it and cooperate with them. Otherwise Great Britain will look weak and indecisive.’ By agreeing to accept the study, Britain then hoped to be able to affect the method of application. The tripartite Foreign Ministers’ meetings also agreed to recognise the Federal Republic as the legitimate representative of Germany, and strengthened its


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security guarantee to something close to that contained in NATO’s Article 5. This was an improvement on that contained in Article 6, but agreement on Germany’s contribution to Western defence made little progress.29 Since France had vetoed the US proposal, it was incumbent on the French to come up with an alternative. Jean Monnet noted that if, having vetoed the US plan, France then acquiesced and accepted it, ‘our resistance will have proved futile. We shall lose face and lose the initiative.’ Therefore the French démarche was put together in order to maintain status and influence, as well as – perhaps rather than – being a workable solution in itself. The Pleven Plan for a European Defence Community (EDC) was unveiled in October 1950. The proposal became the plan for the management of German rearmament over the next four years.30

The fall and rise of the NATO option There were two irreconcilables in the intra-Alliance debate. The first of these was the fact that, while the Federal Republic viewed rearmament and institutional membership as a way to obtain rehabilitation and equality, the European allies planned institutional membership as a way to keep Germany permanently subordinate. The second was that, for Washington, German rearmament would potentially allow for a reduced US military presence in Europe, but for the European members it would necessitate the maintenance of that presence. The first of these irreconcilables was the reason Germany was not admitted to NATO for five years after the 1950 decision on rearmament; both dictated the nature of the eventual accession, and were themselves raised by the question of whether it was possible to arm Germans without arming Germany.31 The EDC represented the first comprehensive attempt at this. The concept underlying the EDC was that of integrating French and German troops into a single, European army under the control of a European Defence Minister. In this way the possibility of independent German military action could be permanently discounted. By virtue of this, Germany’s defence policy would be firmly and irrevocably oriented to a West European vocation. The Plan, proposed by the French Premier René Pleven, was very much a product of its time, based as it clearly was on the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was itself being set up at the same time. Moreover, it demonstrated the duality of the German issue. It was an attempt not only to secure a mili-


tary contribution from Germany and so remove the worst of the rearmament burden from the NATO allies, but also to permanently guarantee France in particular against any possible future German threat, by taking the capacity to make such a threat forever out of German hands. As the British FO noted, ‘The French concept of Germany has not fundamentally altered. For them, Germany remains the enemy . . . They view everything from the point of view of French security against Germany.’32 Thus, for France, the rationale behind the Pleven Plan was to permanently subordinate Germany to European integration, and thereby secure France against Germany. Moreover, William Hitchcock argues that a key French fear at this time was of a shift in the European power hierarchy towards a US–German axis, and claims that this was an important rationale behind the . Schuman Plan. Similarly, McGeehan notes that ‘France continued to be suspicious and resentful of close Anglo–American relations, and afraid of being left out of them’. These two fears can be seen as interrelated: part of what McGeehan describes as ‘an inferiority neurosis’ in post-war French foreign policy.33 The EDC was fraught with problems, and just as France was alone in its veto of the New York package, it found little or no support for the EDC plan when it was discussed at the NATO Defence Committee. The US regarded the proposal with ‘disdain’, Britain considered it vague and impracticable and all the other NATO members opposed it. However, the positions of France and its allies were, in Ismay’s words, ‘too divergent to be reconciled’: there was little or no common ground, neither side was willing to move significantly from its position, and thus the scope for a compromise solution was extremely limited.34 Therefore the problem was handed down to the Council of Deputies and the Military Committee, who struggled for two months to find a compromise that would accommodate both US and French demands. Britain had noted that the Pleven Plan was ‘obviously completely impracticable’ and therefore France ‘must be persuaded to negotiate’. However, the Pleven Plan could not be rejected publicly, as this would freeze French opposition. Therefore, some middle ground had to be established: ‘if any parts of [the Pleven Plan] could be soundly adapted and incorporated into the NATO framework, so much the better’. This was the task of the Deputies and the Military Committee. The intractability of the deadlock was illustrated by the result of these efforts, the Spofford Plan.35 Under the Plan the US agreed to accept the idea of German rearmament under a European Army rather than SACEUR, whilst France


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relented a little on German rearmament being planned before the EDC structure was up and running. The agreement in practice was fragile and contradictory: ‘the United States had not given up pressing for German units incorporated directly into a NATO force, and France had not given up pressing for the European Army as the only possible solution to the German rearmament dilemma’. Not only that, but Germany had in fact rejected both plans as they were put forward by the US and France. The plans, in their different ways and to differing degrees, both nonetheless involved the subordination of Germany within a NATO or EDC frame, and Adenauer had repeated that German rearmament must be on a basis of equality.36 The result of these conflicts and compromises was parallel negotiations. The NAC, after the Deputies had approved the Spofford Plan, requested the Allied High Commission to discuss the NATO option with Adenauer’s government in January 1951. These were the Petersberg negotiations. At the same time, a parallel set of negotiations on the EDC was being held in Paris from February 1951. As Fursdon notes, this rather farcical situation arose from the Spofford Plan, but meant that two conferences ‘would be functioning in parallel but pursuing completely different means in the hope of achieving completely different ends’. However, whilst the negotiations progressed, a key development was taking place: the US, Britain and the Federal Republic gradually began to support the EDC over the NATO option.37 For the US, this change was driven by three factors. The first of these was a pragmatic recognition that France would not accept any plan for German rearmament other than EDC. Second was a genuine change of mind regarding the practicability of EDC, prompted in large part by the unexpected support of Eisenhower. As SACEUR, Eisenhower had regarded EDC with scorn, but gradually came to look on the scheme as a way to maximise European military potential. This potential, he argued in 1951, ‘cannot be fully developed as long as the region is just a hodge-podge of sovereign political territories’, but could be realised through the EDC: ‘it is difficult, but it can be done. All of us ought to get behind it energetically.’ Most importantly, Eisenhower produced a report that appeared to show how the EDC could be successfully implemented in military terms (always the bottom line for the US). This was backed by a Standing Group report, which stated that EDC would be militarily acceptable, provided it was politically feasible to create it.38 The third factor was domestic pressure. The winter of 1950–1 was the time of the so-called ‘Great Debate’ on the US commitment to Europe.39


The debate, ‘the last hurrah of isolationism’, lasted two months as Congressional and Senate approval was sought for the commitment of US forces to the Continent. Eventual approval was secured, but on the condition that the US JCS ‘certify’ that the other NATO allies were making ‘appropriate progress in collective defense before the soldiers left the United States’. This proviso, coupled with fierce condemnation of the delay in securing a German contribution, was a clear and pressing indication that the US might have to opt for the line of least resistance in rearming Germany. In the face of French resistance to anything short of EDC, the Pleven Plan assumed pole position. The NATO option, therefore, was shelved in the US not because of intrinsic problems with the solution itself, but as a consequence of pressure from within and without. With encouraging reports from Eisenhower on the apparent workability of the EDC now to hand, the US took on the French plan.40 This had a decisive influence on British policy. Britain had resisted the EDC partly on the grounds of lack of practicability, partly out of a suspicion that it represented a French bid for Continental leadership and a diversion from the Atlanticist framework cherished by Britain and partly out of a fear that if the EDC could be made to work it would inevitably be dominated by Germany.41 This fear, driven by the historical failure of European alliances to contain or balance Germany, was widely shared elsewhere in West Europe.42 For example, the Dutch expressed fears that, once it was set up the EDC might take a line independent of NATO and that EDC would be represented in NATO with only one voice . . . The Dutch were afraid that they would not only have little say in EDC but they would also end up with little voice in NATO. What they really wanted was assurance that the EDC would be brought into relationship with NATO in such a way as to prevent this.43 This highlights a widely held fear that the ‘voice’ of the EDC within NATO – and by implication the voice of European NATO members – would effectively be that of Germany. It was for this reason that eventual EDC signatories ardently desired British participation in the plan, but paradoxically this was precisely why Britain refused to join. The British decision to support the EDC was partly based on a recognition that France would accept nothing else, but mostly by the change in Washington: as Warner puts it, ‘the reason for the change in the


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British government’s attitude was that the Americans had changed theirs’.44 Britain and the US both attempted to head off Continental concerns by agreeing that (a) there could be joint NATO–EDC meetings at the request of a member of either, thus giving Germany a voice in NATO; and (b) an attack on an EDC member would be regarded as an attack on NATO, thereby invoking Article 5. This was agreed at tripartite meetings between Britain, the US and France, and later with Adenauer, but the terms had been prepared by the NATO Deputies. At the Lisbon NAC in 1952, the reciprocal EDC–NATO security undertakings were adopted as policy, and it was agreed that the EDC principles conformed to those of the Alliance.45 One other crucial participant in EDC remains: the Federal Republic. Adenauer had originally opposed both the Pleven Plan and the Spofford compromise, and NATO membership remained the prime objective, but the Petersburg negotiations showed that to be a diminishing possibility as the EDC bandwagon gained its mostly reluctant passengers. As with most other EDC signatories, therefore, Adenauer’s reasoning followed practical lines: the EDC was ‘the only forum available to achieve his goals’. It remained to reorient the Pleven Plan to make it acceptable to Germany and Adenauer’s criteria. However, the very factors that made the EDC acceptable to Germany made it increasingly unacceptable to the other members.46 It is very clear France gained few genuine converts to the EDC. It is therefore fair to say, as Fursdon points out, that the underlying problem was that ‘the majority of the participant and observer nations really still preferred the NATO option’, an option which they had abandoned with reluctance and no genuine conviction.47 Few regarded the EDC as a workable or desirable solution in itself, and thus it is hardly surprising that the plan failed: the real surprise is that it came as close to success as it did. But failure was its fate, and with this the NATO option once again assumed centre-stage.

The NATO option The prospects for a successful ratification of EDC were fading for most of the summer of 1954, and the US, whose démarche in 1950 had set the ball rolling, had little contingency planning to fall back upon.48 At the early post-EDC stage there was no clear NATO option as such. However, Britain had been looking into alternatives for some time, and it was here that the solution began to take shape. As Dockrill puts it,


‘leadership of the Alliance temporarily pass[ed] to London’. It fell to the British government to ‘rescue US diplomacy, and perhaps NATO, from the wreckage’.49 A NATO solution was, first, the instinctively preferred option for most of its members, and second was the only remaining option after the EDC’s failure. However, NATO did possess certain limitations of its own. The principal problem was that the Alliance was not designed to incorporate a state whose latent power was viewed as a potential threat by other members. No state had institutionalised primacy in the Alliance, and hierarchy tended to be heavily affected by relative power. Paradoxically, this was a reason for NATO’s attractiveness and EDC’s failure: if Germany could not be subordinated to a supranational authority, then it would be subordinated to the same hierarchical power realities that existed within NATO. It would, in short, be subordinate to the US. NATO in 1954 was a very different organisation compared to the Alliance in 1950 when the decision on German rearmament had first been made. In particular, it had developed an integrated military command structure and strategy. This process had begun very shortly after the 1950 decision on German rearmament, and while it was not solely concerned with the German issue, the accession of the Federal Republic was an influential factor. Significant developments between 1950 and 1954 were the appointment of Eisenhower as SACEUR in December 1950, the establishment of Allied Command Europe and Supreme Headquarters Allied Command Europe (ACE and SHAPE, respectively) by April 1951, and the Paris Agreements of October 1954. Of these, only the last was a direct consequence of the decision to invite the Federal Republic to accede, but the previous developments were also inextricably linked to German accession. The heightened sense of military insecurity had dwindled, although not altogether disappeared. The nagging sense of inferiority, however, would never be completely allayed, and NATO strategy had evolved to try to deal with this. Conventional force goals set by NATO were unlikely to be met, and the Alliance increasingly looked to nuclear weapons as a way to offset this. By October 1953 the US had begun to deploy nuclear weapons at the battlefield level: NATO’s reliance on nuclear weapons had expanded from strategic air attack to integration of nuclear weapons at all levels. This not only led to a more developed command structure, but also meant a rapid increase in the forces deployed on the Continent. Thus two barriers to German rearmament – the absence of a clear structure with which to envelop the Federal Republic and the meagre state of NATO’s own military capabilities – no


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longer applied. A strong military structure existed, with sufficient forces to dwarf any German contribution.50 Nonetheless, Germany could not simply accede in the way Greece and Turkey had; this accession necessitated special conditions. Any solution would have to enable German rearmament, whilst simultaneously providing security from Germany without discriminating against Germany. It would thus have to reconcile the divergent concerns and demands of the US, France and the European members of NATO, and the Federal Republic (not to mention everyone’s desire for a solution to this five-year-old problem). To accomplish this was no easy task, but of undoubted centrality was the position of France, which had successively vetoed the NATO option, clung to EDC over the objections and doubts of its allies, and finally thrown out its own alternative. For this very reason, France was in an isolated and weakened position by September 1954, and politically was unable to effectively stand in the way of the proposed solution. In the event of a French block on agreement, both the US and Britain were prepared to threaten to press ahead without France. Dulles had already recommended that, should France veto the NATO option, the recourse should be had to ‘steps by the US, UK and Germany (including possibly Benelux and Italy) to proceed, without French concurrence, with German rearmament under a defense agreement along the lines of the Yugoslav–Greek–Turkish Pact’. He also noted that ‘these steps might induce a welcome change in the French position’. This ‘policy of the empty chair’ had the full support of the Benelux states, and Adenauer was thinking along similar lines.51 Nonetheless, accession would have to be ratified by the French Parliament, and the Allies were compelled to take this into account when negotiating the NATO plan. The conditions that would need to be met for a successful ratification were (a) strengthening of the Brussels Treaty; (b) assurances from the US and Britain that their forces would remain on the Continent; (c) German arms levels would have to be controlled by some means. The concerns that underlay these conditions – uncontrolled German rearmament and the possibility of US–British withdrawal – were shared by the other European members of NATO.52 In contrast to the protracted and tortuous EDC negotiations, the NATO solution was agreed within a very short space of time: 28 September–3 October 1954. However, the venue for these negotiations, and thereby for a decision on German admission to NATO, was outside the Alliance’s institutional framework. Instead, the negotiations took place at a Nine-Power Conference attended by the US, Canada, Britain, France, Benelux, Germany and Italy. In other words, this was


the WET negotiators plus the two states that were to join the Brussels treaty, although it is worth noting that, with the exception of France and Italy, all NATO members at the Nine-Power Conference brought their Permanent Representative to the NAC as part of their negotiating team.53 There was surprisingly little protest at this within the Alliance.54 In fact, the US, along with Canada, had initially favoured an emergency meeting of the NAC after the French Parliament’s rejection of EDC, but was persuaded by Britain that a Nine-Power Conference would be preferable.55 The reasons for this are not clear, but Dockrill notes that, for the participants, ‘it seemed more sensible to engage in complex negotiations in a forum limited to a compact group of powers who were directly connected with the German problem’.56 However, this seems insufficient: it would surely be perverse for Britain to argue that Denmark, Norway and Greece had no ‘direct interest’ in the German question, given their wartime experiences at the hands of Hitler’s Germany. Three reasons can be put forward. The first of these is simple time. The US was particularly impatient for the German rearmament question to be resolved, and Adenauer stressed to his allies that ‘it was imperative for the Federal Republic to be given its sovereignty and be allowed to participate in the defense effort in the near future if continued support for the policies he represented were to be expected’. Britain argued that ‘no solution could be found at a NATO conference table; the real work had to be done prior to such a meeting’. We saw in Chapter 3 that Greek–Turkish accession was discussed at meetings of the Standing Group, the Council of Deputies, and US–British–French Foreign Ministers before going before a full meeting of the NAC. In the case of the German accession, the collapse of EDC did not leave enough time for NATO’s institutional machinery to be properly utilised. However, some form of preliminary work on the mechanics and modalities of accession was necessary, and a high-level meeting short of the NAC was a way to accomplish this.57 Canada, Norway and Portugal all argued that: ‘if we must choose between a premature NATO meeting and a non-NATO meeting, we strongly prefer the former’, but Canada noted the problems inherent in this: it might be well to delegate . . . the responsibility of negotiating with the German Government and reporting back continuously to the NATO Council. This smaller group might well be the Occupying Powers [i.e. US, Britain and France], or it might be the Three Powers


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plus the EDC plus Canada. We realise of course that the Three Powers have, as Occupying Powers, certain authority relating to German sovereignty which is not and cannot be derived from the NATO Council.58 This points to the second reason: the inextricable link between German rearmament and the restoration of German sovereignty. A US diplomat noted that Adenauer was ‘aiming at full and complete sovereignty with equal membership in NATO, but he is prepared . . . to give certain assurances as to rearmament’. This quid pro quo, by necessity, meant that German accession to the Alliance involved issues that would not be dealt with via an Alliance framework. This not only involved the Occupying Powers, but also Germany, and it was very clear that Germany could not be permitted to sit at an NAC meeting without being a NATO member. Thus it could be that, rather than try to deal with issues in separate frameworks – the NAC and an Occupying Powers conference, for example – it was simply easier to set up an extra-Alliance venue.59 Third, it should be noted that none of the NATO members excluded from the Nine-Power Conference were Brussels Treaty members, or signatories to the EDC. The Conference comprised the signatories to the defunct EDC plus the US and Canada. There was a link, hinted at in the Canadian position noted above, between the EDC and the NATO solution. Eden made this point to the US: ‘Europe had to take the initiative to sort this essentially European problem out.’60 These three factors are perhaps not too convincing in themselves, but when combined they do produce a picture: a quick solution was needed, Germany could not be allowed to sit in on NATO committees, NATO committees could not handle the end of the occupation and the Brussels Treaty was inextricably linked to the overall solution. When these factors are taken together, it can be seen that the NATO framework was not an appropriate forum. Moreover, the NATO members who were excluded from the Conference received assurances that any solution reached would have to be approved by the NAC.61 At any rate, by the end of the meetings, it was agreed that: • German force contributions would be fixed at the same levels agreed under EDC.62 • All forces were to be assigned to, and deployed by, SACEUR. This was a key objective. The US had noted before the conference that a NATO option for German rearmament had to include ‘strengthening of SACEUR’s control over deployment of forces committed to him so


that they will be deployed in accordance with NATO plans and can be moved within his area only as a result of his decision’.63 • The strength of defence forces would, however, be fixed by the Brussels Treaty Organisation. The organisation would set maximum force levels, and all parties would agree not to increase forces except by unanimous consent. This appears to have originated in France. At a meeting with Eden before the Nine-Power Conference, MendèsFrance had said that ‘it was difficult for NATO to provide ceilings. It was a little odd for the same organisation to have the tasks both of building up and holding down military preparedness. NATO might set the minimum and Brussels the maximum.’64 • Britain and the US would maintain their undertakings to EDC. The minimum British force commitment to the Continent would remain, and was not to be changed against the wishes of the other Brussels Treaty signatories. • Germany would renounce the production of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.65 Therefore, under the agreement, it became necessary for German security to be covered largely by the US and by the Alliance, and in doing this the possibility of Germany deciding – now or in the future – to search for security unilaterally was consequently diminished. In a multilateral framework, the future of German security policy would be controlled by Germany in collaboration with its partners, not by a supranational body. This was as much as could be hoped for, and after the failure of EDC even the French government accepted this. At the Conference, Eden made a plea for this to be borne in mind, arguing that the allies could attempt to proceed ‘in a position of trust and confidence in each other’ or ‘build up against each other elaborate safeguards showing that we have no trust and confidence in each other at all’. In other words, the institutionalised inequalities inherent in the EDC should not be resurrected.66 The scheme aimed to use the 1948 Brussels Treaty organisation, NATO’s Eurocentric predecessor, as a vehicle for German accession, and thus achieved the difficult task of satisfying both Europeanists and Atlanticists. It would do this by the accession of Germany (and Italy) to the Brussels Treaty (now under the name of the Western European Union or WEU) before joining NATO. The WEU would restrict any future German armament, and set a ceiling on German armed capacity, whilst NATO would oversee immediate rearmament of a German army under the new SHAPE command. The WEU had the advantage of British


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membership, and of being more tightly-knit while lacking the supranational features that had made the EDC an unattractive option. Adenauer noted this when he remarked that ‘The Brussels Pact is being used because, first, it is not supranational, and secondly, because the UK is in it; the combination of these two factors amounts to a block against future integration’.67 Moreover, the French leader Mendès-France had stated that the main concern of France was for ‘an agreement that was as close as possible to a simplified EDC treaty without the provisions [for] unifying forces, and with Great Britain as a member’.68 This was partly driven by domestic considerations: it was stressed that the French Assembly, despite their rejection of the EDC, would accept only an alternative that retained some elements of the plan. They would reject German sovereignty unless it came with appropriate safeguards and integration.69 The eventual solution was a neat compromise (or fudge) of the EDC problem: Germany would join a Euro-centric organisation that, critically, included Britain and which would involve the renunciation of weapons of mass destruction. In this way, the concept of subordinating German armed forces to a European international organisation was kept. This reflects Eden’s point, noted above, that this was ‘an essentially European problem’, and Britain viewed the Brussels Treaty as ‘a political instrument to keep alive the idea of European unity’.70 This view was shared by Adenauer and the Benelux states.71 Adenauer in particular had stressed the need for a European dimension to any solution. The West German people, he stated, were ‘to some extent unbalanced by their recent history’, and were in need of a clear ideal if they were not to lean towards neutralism. This was the Westernisation policy to which Adenauer had closely tied himself, and he argued that ‘the European idea . . . remained the only certain way to confirm German association with the West and to strengthen German democracy’.72 The danger, as the allies saw it, lay in creating a ‘little NATO’, or a Euro-centric alliance that might split its transatlantic sibling.73 However, Jebb of the FO pointed out that it may be that there is a danger of a split in NATO if too much weight is placed on the proposed expansion of the BTO, but there is certainly also a danger of an even larger split if insufficient weight is placed on it.74 There was little or no supranationalism about the WEU, but this was inevitable: by this point there was a growing recognition that there was


‘no practical halfway house between the supranational and the international approach, i.e. between EDC and NATO concepts’.75 The difficulties were papered over by virtue of the fact that none of the weapons that would be under the remit of the WEU would actually be produced in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the real rather than hypothetical rearmament – the German contribution to the conventional forces in Europe – would be included under NATO’s umbrella. These means represented the closest available approximation of the EDC’s supranational powers. In short, the solution changed only the means of imposing safeguards; it did not abandon the principle of imposing them. The irony is that the Brussels Treaty specifically cited Germany as a potential threat to its members. The Preamble to the Treaty stated that the Parties were resolved ‘to take such steps as may be necessary in the event of a renewal by Germany of a policy of aggression’, and Article 7 committed them to ‘consult . . . with regard to the attitude to be adopted and the steps to be taken in case of a renewal by Germany of an aggressive policy’.76 This was now obviously unacceptable, and the Preamble sentence was changed to read ‘to promote the unity and encourage the progressive integration of Europe’, with a similar alteration to Article 7.77 Changes in the NATO framework itself were also significant. Britain, the US and France, three key powers in the Alliance (including the two powers France considered vital to European stability), agreed that if a member resorted to force in such a way as to jeopardise ‘the integrity and unity of the Atlantic Alliance or its defensive purposes’, then the Article 5 guarantee of that member would be revoked. In addition, the North Atlantic Treaty was now considered to be indefinite in duration, and Britain pledged not to withdraw its Continental forces against the wishes of the Brussels powers. Stikker notes that ‘Eden rightly calculated that the Conference could only succeed if the United Kingdom made a gesture towards the Continent’. Dulles informed Eisenhower that the British commitment ‘was regarded . . . by other countries [at the NinePower Conference] as an historical decision tying England to the Continent in a way which has never been done before. The seven other countries made responses which were expressive of profound appreciation.’78 The US commitment was even more important. Ireland notes that in order for Western Europe to accept the reconstruction of a West German state and its integration into the recovery and defense pro-


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grams for Western Europe, the United States clearly had to involve itself in a security framework designed to meet the more complex needs of its European allies. In essence, in order to reconstitute a balance of power against the Soviet Union, the United States had to become a part of a more intricate balance designed both to contain the Soviet threat and permanently to end the threat of German domination.79 In short, the US was now an integral part of the West European security system. Taken together, these are definitive moments for the Alliance. They mean, first, that NATO now had its functions on the imposition of intramember order strengthened; the threat to revoke Article 5 for belligerent members was clearly aimed at addressing fears that the Federal Republic might one day attempt a forcible reunification of Germany. Second, Britain was treaty-bound to a Continental commitment. This commitment, a departure from traditional British military policy, was heavily influenced by the US pledge not to withdraw its own forces from the Continent. At the Conference, Britain had made it very plain to the US that it had ‘grave concern’ at the possibility of having British troops committed to the Continent if US forces were withdrawn. The FO report of the preceding January had noted that ‘The British counterweight by itself might not suffice to restrain Germany, and in recognition of this we have been careful in our continental commitments to make sure of a corresponding American commitment or at least American support. We ought not to depart from this course’.80 Churchill also repeated several times ‘we cannot stay there alone without you’ in conversations with Dulles.81 Third, NATO had become a permanent institution in West Europe, not simply a military guarantee. With the issue of how to accommodate German rearmament resolved, the formal status of the Federal Republic as an occupied state came to an end on 23 October 1954, in the Paris Agreements. These Agreements took the form of four protocols on the modification of the Brussels Treaty, the admission of Germany to NATO, the end of Germany’s occupied status and Franco–German agreement on the Saar.82 Therefore, one of the most divisive issues in Europe was resolved with the Alliance as a fundamental part of the solution. This was a crucial moment. German security policy would now be directed principally via an Atlanticist framework: the price of its sovereignty was incorporation into the Western bloc.


Conclusions In dealing with Germany, NATO was dealing with a historical problem in European security, one that had twice overturned the status quo in Europe and had played an instrumental role in the demise of the classical European security system. NATO was, at base, an instrument by which normality could be restored in Europe in the face of a widely perceived Soviet threat. However, the significance of Germany in the collapse of that normality meant that the re-emergence of a German state represented a second perceived threat to the restoration of stability. The immediate threat seen to be emanating from the Soviet Union was largely a post-war one, but the ‘German Question’, and its implications for security in Europe, had existed for at least 70 years. Three imperatives came together in the accession to the Alliance: the imperative of a German contribution, of German incorporation into the West European state system and the imperative of rehabilitating the German state as a stable and non-aggressive state. The first of these three was an immediate result of the Cold War, but proved inseparable from the other two, which were both rooted in long-term experience. In other words, the question of a German contribution to the rearmament drive might not have arisen without the Cold War, but the questions of incorporation and rehabilitation would have been key concerns under any circumstances.

External factors Of the three imperatives referred to above, two were essentially externally-driven in nature. These were the incorporation of the Federal Republic into the West European system of states, and the rehabilitation of the Republic as a stable democracy. Thus the accession was driven by nothing less than an attempt to resolve the international ‘German Question’. We saw at the beginning of this chapter that for most Germans, the ‘German Question’ was concerned with unification. In this perspective, therefore, NATO membership, by virtue of making the division of Germany permanent whilst the Cold War lasted, posed rather than answered the Question. For most West European states, their own understanding of the ‘German Question’ had in fact been addressed. When viewed in these terms, it is easy to understand why this proved to be such an intractable issue for the Allies. For the second time in living memory, they were in a position to decisively affect the future stability of the West European state system; to have one oppor-


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tunity would have been rare, and the consequences of the first attempt were plain to see. Since the ‘German Question’ was fundamentally an international systemic question, then it would have to be resolved by international means. This was particularly true after the abandonment of wartime plans for the dismemberment or pastoralisation of Germany. The fact of German indispensability to European prosperity and defence had to be confronted, as did the fact that German participation in both these areas could be done only via a German state. Once this was recognised, then the ‘German Question’ required some form of answer. To reiterate a point made earlier, the dilemma of this situation was that Germany in the past had been too powerful to easily fit into the European system, but not powerful enough to dominate the system by hegemonic overlay. Thus any solution would have to find some way around this problem, and would clearly be strongly related both to prevalent views on Germany and on prevalent views on the nature of post-war European security. The EDC is a good illustration of the first of these, the particular view of Germany. The original idea behind it, that of permanently subordinating Germany to a supranational institution, clearly demonstrates a fear not of German power as such, but of the capacity of Germany and Germans to wield it wisely and non-aggressively. It contained, at its heart, a sometimes unspoken but nonetheless potent belief that a revived and powerful German state would not and could not be trusted not to overturn the systemic setting in which it found itself. In such a perspective, it would be necessary for Germany’s capacity for military self-assertion to be permanently neutralised by absorption into a supranational setting. This idea contained the seeds of its own destruction, as long as the absorption into such an institution was not total. None of the signatories were prepared to take such a step, which meant that some power hierarchies were bound to emerge (as they had with NATO). In this scenario, the old fear of German dominance, with nothing to balance it, resurfaced. Thus the concept failed in its own basic purpose. Therefore the NATO option took precedence, which had always been the preference of most members. The option illustrates the second set of views – those of the workings of the international system – as well as the first. It was this second set of views that had basically been behind the opposition to EDC, and their fundamental concern was with relative power. NATO’s utility in response to the ‘German Question’ was one of channelling and subordination. By joining the Alliance, Germany’s


military power would be channelled through the multilateral apparatus of SHAPE, but it would also be subordinated to the power of the US. To put it another way, the EDC tried and failed to subordinate Germany to supranationalism; in NATO, Germany would be subjected to the overlay of the US. NATO’s role was therefore four-fold: it assured its European members of the diffusion of German power via international frameworks, subordinated Germany to the US presence, removed the possibility of neutralism given that the Federal Republic was explicitly aligned with the Western bloc and provided a long-term framework in which the Federal Republic could find a place. The internal debate Like so much about the post-war emergence of the Federal Republic, the rearmament issue was a direct product of the developing Cold War. However, unlike other aspects of the post-war ‘German Question’, rearmament was not envisaged as a long-term solution to a specifically German issue. Rather, it was a natural and, to an extent, expedient solution to the dilemmas of the forward strategy and the militarisation of the Cold War. The forward strategy, with its emphasis on defending rather than liberating West Europe, always implied the inclusion of German territory; once West German sovereignty became an immediate likelihood, the inclusion of its territory became a necessity for NATO. Similarly, the utilisation of German military capabilities was also an inevitable consequence of the newly militarised Cold War and the inability of the other allies to meet the requirements of their chosen strategy. It is important to note here that these twin prerogatives of the forward-defence principle and the need for additional contributions to the implementation of that principle would have arisen regardless of the wider ‘German Question’. The requirements were for territory and forces, and the fact that these were German territory and forces was essentially incidental to the need for them. However, the fact that the territory and forces needed were German raised wider political and historical tensions and concerns. The strategic necessities were always latent in the forward-defence principle, but the problem was that there appeared to be only one possible source for NATO’s needs. The significance of this for assessing the relationship between NATO and German rearmament is that the strategic rationale was only a part of the question, but a part that demanded a resolution of an historical conflict within the European security system. Rearmament and the forward-strategy principle, therefore, aggravated


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the ‘German Question’ even though these concerns were only peripherally concerned with the Federal Republic as such. In other words, rearmament and the forward strategy were NATO problems as well as German problems. This aggravation highlighted the dilemmas of how to incorporate the Federal Republic into Western Europe, added new dilemmas now that the new state would have access to armed forces and stimulated efforts to find a new solution to the ‘German Question’. The role of the US can be described here as catalytic, but to varying degrees. Its initial démarche in September 1950 unquestionably set the ball rolling, but once the Pleven Plan was adopted, the US was marginalised as a participant in discussion. Its influence was permanently felt (witness Dulles’ ham-fisted threat of ‘an agonising reappraisal’ if EDC should fail), and its presence in Europe became even more fervently desired as German rearmament loomed closer. However, two things should be borne in mind: the first is that the US found it impossible to overcome French resistance to a NATO solution in 1950–1, and abandoned attempts to try. The second is that the eventual NATO option found its source in London rather than Washington. Both these point to a strong influence of the two Standing Group powers on NATO’s usually acknowledged leader. A hypothetical question that can be asked is whether, had France not clung so tightly to the EDC concept, a solution could have been reached more quickly, and what the solution would have looked like. Given that the other NATO members favoured an Alliance-based resolution of the German rearmament problem, it does seem clear that a NATO option would have been adopted considerably sooner than October 1954, but its overall shape is another matter. The preceding analysis shows some clear links between the EDC and the programme thrashed out at the Nine-Power Conference; EDC’s precepts did not entirely die on the floor of the French Assembly. This aspect of the solution clearly shows the influence of French concerns, many of which were shared elsewhere on the Continent. French fears were widely shared; opposition was concerned with whether the EDC was an appropriate or workable solution to those concerns. Moreover, the link between NATO and the Brussels Treaty was also largely a product of the EDC’s demise. The taxonomy of membership The issue of German membership of the Alliance was forced to the front of NATO’s agenda by strategic necessity; previously it had been more the preserve of the Allied High Commission. The manner in which this became such a prominent issue for NATO demonstrates the strategic


indispensability of Germany, but also the problems inherent in Germany’s political qualifications to be a NATO member. The strategic case for accession was virtually unanswerable. The forward strategy would be geographically and materially unworkable without German membership and contribution. This was never in any serious question, and if strategic necessities had been the determining element in Alliance expansion, then Germany would have been the most unproblematic of accessions. However, strategic qualifications were very clearly not determining elements, even though they were decisive in forcing the Allies to confront the issue of German membership. The effect of this was to induce an inversion of procedure for the Allies. It will be recalled that the envisaged procedure was for Germany to demonstrate its political stability and allegiance to the West, after which NATO membership would be an option. Only then would the Federal Republic be permitted to rearm within an Alliance framework. The agreement on the forward strategy and the US package proposal forced this procedure to be reversed: now institutional membership would be the starting point. Since distrust of the Federal Republic was still widespread, rearmament was being negotiated before Germany had ‘proved’ (whatever that might mean) its ability to be trusted as an armed ally in the Cold War. To put it simply, Germany fitted the strategic articulation of ‘us’ in the Alliance, and was clearly an integral part of European order, but it had not yet demonstrated that it was politically ‘one of us’. This helps to explain why NATO was such an automatic choice for most of its members, other than France. In the immediate post-war distrust of Germany, the prospect of submerging security into a supranational organisation that included their former enemy was not an appealing one. The Alliance option meant using the classical tools of power and balance in order to resolve the ‘German Question’ with the hegemonic presence of the US. There was more to it than this, however. NATO membership was critical to the process by which the Federal Republic rehabilitated itself as a European state. It will be recalled that Adenauer’s Westernisation policy was essentially about ‘playing the Western game’. The only way, for Adenauer, by which Germany could re-establish itself as a legitimate actor and reconcile old enmities was to be ‘the most European nation among the Europeans’.83 The role of the Alliance in this was significant. To ‘play the Western game’ in the Cold War was to join, as conspicuously and irrevocably as possible, in the emerging liberal reconstruction


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of West Europe and to clearly take sides in the Cold War confrontation. As the clearest expression of bloc politics in Europe and as the guarantor of West European recovery, the Alliance was clearly a key institution. For the Federal Republic, joining NATO was a clear sign of its Western vocation and a way to permanently marginalise neutralist tendencies in domestic politics. In the NATO context, this was achieved by making it extremely difficult for any future German government to pursue such a course, since doing so would inevitably mean decoupling from the Alliance and potentially damaging the Federal Republic’s relations with its Western allies. These allies were important to German economic recovery and prosperity, and therefore to alienate them by decoupling from NATO would have serious implications for the Federal Republic. Thus NATO membership served as a crucial part of Adenauer’s policy of embedding the Federal Republic into the emerging politico–economic bloc in West Europe. It was also, therefore, a way for the Federal Republic to establish an identity for itself that did not by definition threaten its neighbours. There was thus a dual purpose in the political criteria by which the Federal Republic became one of ‘us’ in the Alliance. By redefining the Federal Republic in terms of the political idea of the West, it would not only reconcile a long-standing identity crisis within German political culture, but would also reconcile Germany with its neighbours by the same process. In conclusion, therefore, the accession of the Federal Republic was a defining moment for the Alliance. It both ameliorated some immediate problems for the Alliance, and resolved some critical debates about the future of Germany. In this sense the accession was a case of both Germany being used to solved NATO’s problems, and NATO being used to solve the ‘German Question’. The implications for the Alliance are as follows. First, the failure of EDC and the incorporation of German rearmament meant that NATO would, partly by design and partly by default, be the central organisation for those states in West Europe who defined the Soviet Union as an active threat and who aligned explicitly with the US bloc. The chance for a Euro-centric organisation along the lines of the ECSC and EEC were markedly diminished, as the marginal history of the WEU illustrates. Second, in addition to this centrality in the Cold War confrontation, NATO was now also central to the security relations between West European members: it was no longer, if it ever had been, solely an anti-Soviet guarantee. The inclusion of the Federal Republic meant that the Alliance was now the principal instru-


ment by which German security policy would be managed and accommodated in the future. As an alliance, NATO was a goal-oriented organisation, which would cease to have a clear function once its Soviet adversary no longer existed. It was now also a mutual security institution, and as such was process-oriented: it was no longer solely dependent upon an enemy, but was an instrument for the process of security cooperation and coordination among its members. In this way, it had achieved a significance and a role that had hitherto been only latent.

5 Spain Joins the Alliance, 1982–6

With the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany, NATO became the institution through which German security would be defined and managed, as well as the principal organisation by which the East–West military balance in Europe was to be maintained. When the Federal Republic became a member, NATO took on the role of maintaining the military–political balance between its own members, as well as between East and West. In other words, the Alliance had taken on an important non-Cold War agenda. However, this was also a key moment in the Cold War in Europe. By the time the Federal Republic joined NATO in 1955, the Cold War system had spread to embrace all of Europe. Nearly all states defined their alignment in terms of the Cold War, whether it was Soviet alignment, US alignment or the small group of clearly neutral states such as Sweden and Ireland. As Robert Hunter notes, most of the ambiguities in the European security system had been removed by 1955.1 Only two such ambiguities remained: Spain and Yugoslavia. Neither could really be described as properly neutral, and yet neither was fully integrated into either bloc. Both had a special history that marked them out from other European states, and both had troubled times in their recent pasts. Spain, although clearly a West European state in geographical and historical terms, had had difficult relations with its neighbours. These difficulties were rooted in the nature of the ruling Francoist regime in Spain, and prevented Spain from becoming politically accepted by the rest of Western Europe. The nature of Franco’s regime, and his wartime policy, was to make him a pariah among West European states in the post-war period, and yet Spain presented several strategic military advantages for NATO. The story of how these conflicting images were reconciled is a long-term 127


one, and spans all of NATO’s history, from the Pentagon Talks up to the eventual accession of Spain in 1982. It is impossible to fully understand the driving forces and priorities behind Spain’s accession to the Alliance, or the manner of that accession, without an analysis of historical relations between NATO and Spain. These relations provide an important context to both Spain’s decision to join NATO and NATO’s own decision to enlarge.

Spain, the US and NATO: the quasi-Alliance2 Spain, like Ireland and Switzerland, was conspicuously not a member of the Alliance, but unlike these states it cannot be described as ‘militarily neutralist’ in any meaningful sense. In fact, by the time of its accession, Spain was as fully incorporated into the North Atlantic strategic complex as it was possible for a non-member to be, and was unique in this respect. The origins of Spain’s unique position in Europe lie in the way in which its place within the European system was defined. For much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history, Spain conspicuously declined to take an active role in the classical dynamics of European security. The classical European system had therefore developed in the absence of Spain, and this isolation from the evolving European security system meant that Spain not only had not shared in many of the defining experiences of European NATO members, but also lacked a clear foreign policy tradition towards the rest of the continent. As Martorell has noted, neither Germany nor Russia had been historic security concerns for Spain in anything like the way they had been elsewhere in Europe, and therefore ‘the creation and durability of the North Atlantic Treaty were responses to diverse and complex causes, with roots deep in a European historical experience which Spain does not share’. Moreover, there was a similar lack of tradition to define any clear picture of Spain itself on the part of other European states. This itself led to a kind of cultural scepticism about Spain’s European credentials on the part of many Europeans, and a similar sense of Spain as unique and separate on the part of some Spaniards.3 The defining experience for Spanish NATO membership came in the 1930s, when the Franco regime took control of Spain after a lengthy and destructive civil war that had critical international consequences. Franco took power in Spain with the very active support of Germany and Italy. This, together with Franco’s own ideological bond with Hitler and Mussolini, was vital in generating the post-war view of the Spanish regime. In particular, the German involvement gave the Civil War an

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international dimension. Bell argues that the key international theme of the Civil War was ‘the revival of German power and growth of German armaments, and the reaction of France and Britain to these developments’. Rather than being solely a domestic power struggle, the Spanish Civil War and its outcome had clear effects on the international scene in Europe. Therefore, if we define the Second World War in Europe as being concerned fundamentally with the restoration of international political balance, then we might argue that the first signs on the breakup of this balance showed in the Spanish Civil War.4 Moreover, Spanish foreign policy during the war itself won few friends outside the Axis. Powell notes that Spain was neutral in a meaningful sense only during the very first stages of the war (the ‘phoney war’, when German victory looked uncertain) and the very final ones (when German defeat was clearly inevitable). In the interim period – i.e. the main body of the war – Spain followed a policy of either pro-Axis nonbelligerency, or (for a period) a policy that Salisbury describes as ‘a Falangist imperialist megalomania’. During the latter, albeit brief, period, Franco was prepared to enter the war on the side of the Axis in exchange for some fairly substantial territorial concessions.5 This policy of oscillating neutralism was driven by a combination of pragmatism about Spain’s capabilities, ideological affinity with the Axis and basic political opportunism. Therefore it is hardly surprising that it acquired a reputation in Europe as the last Nazi–Fascist state at worst, and nakedly opportunistic at best. Such then, was the picture of Spain that prevailed in the immediate post-war period. Most, if not all, European states regarded the Franco regime with either suspicion or outright hostility. In fact, during the closing stages of the war there was a brief but genuine possibility that the Allies would intervene directly to overthrow Franco’s regime.6 In the event, ostracism rather than intervention was the adopted policy. Spain was excluded from the new United Nations organisation, which also recommended in December 1946 that all members sever diplomatic ties with Spain: only Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland and the Vatican declined to comply. The US also decided, under pressure from Western Europe, not to include Spain in the Marshall Aid programme. This atmosphere was to pervade the question of Spanish admittance during the North Atlantic Treaty negotiations in 1948–9. The debate over Spanish membership reveals a blend of historical influence, ideological hostility and strategic reasoning that characterised membership debates during and after the original negotiations themselves. That Spain had clear Alliance credentials should not be doubted;


neither should the awareness of these credentials on the part of the other NATO members. Despite its unsavoury domestic regime and still more unsavoury reputation after its wartime behaviour, Spain did nonetheless occupy a geostrategically important position in the Mediterranean. This was generally recognised among the negotiating parties, and the British, French and US militaries (the three key players in early NATO strategic planning) were particularly keen for Spain to be admitted as a military necessity. However, this should not be taken to imply that Spain’s case had any wide support, or that it was seriously debated as a possible member in the way that, for example, Italy was debated. On the contrary: Spain was discussed almost exclusively as a future member of the Alliance, one to be admitted when political obstacles no longer applied. This was evident from the earliest negotiations. The British briefing paper for the Pentagon Talks argues that ‘naturally Spain and Germany could only join in circumstances very different to the present’. Only Portugal, when it was finally admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty in March 1949, argued strongly in favour of Spanish admission, on the grounds that the Iberian Peninsula constituted a geographical and strategic unit (if not a political one) and was therefore as important to Portuguese security as the West European plain.7 By August 1948, a common view had emerged: while politics ruled Spain out pending democratic reforms, there was also little question of where Spain’s allegiance would lie in the event of East–West war. Franco had been loudly hostile to the Soviet Union before, during and after the Second World War, and so the possibility of encouraging a neutralist posture if Spain was not included in NATO – a clear rationale for inclusion in the cases of Italy and Turkey – did not really apply for Spain.8 Spain and Portugal both presented very similar problems for the Alliance founders: both were strategically important states whose domestic political systems jarred with those of the original negotiators. It is interesting that they produced different results, in that Portugal was admitted with very little opposition, whilst Spain had virtually no sponsors for its membership. Salazar’s regime in Portugal, whilst still explicitly anti-democratic, had more shadowy and less Fascistic origins than that of Franco and was thus not tainted by ideological affiliations with the Axis. Neither had Portugal’s wartime policy alienated the Allies in the way Spain’s had; in fact the Azores had been made available to Allied forces. Finally, Portugal had a long-standing relationship with Britain. Spain had no such historical levers to pull. Still, strategic imperatives had surfaced in the debates about Spain,


and Franco’s cooption into the Atlantic defence system was a widely recognised military necessity. It is likely that only the US could have successfully done this in the way that was to take place during the 1950s. The US had not shared the European experience of Fascism and thus was less loath to put aside recent historical experience. Spain’s strategic adherence to US and, de facto, to NATO planning was secured in a set of agreements signed in 1953, known as the Madrid Pacts.9 For the US, the goal of the Pacts was straightforward: to secure Spain as a strategic point in the Cold War via bilateralism. In this way, there are similarities with the Turkish option a few years earlier. In that case, Turkey’s strategic vocation had been secured via the Alliance, but not before a bilateral agreement had been considered as a means of achieving the same objective. The NATO option was of course the preferred one for the US in the case of Spain, but it remained out of the question as far as the other Allies were concerned. The fact that the changed postKorea strategic environment was sufficient to override political considerations in the Turkish case but not the Spanish one is indicative of how strong the objections to Franco’s regime really were. For Franco’s Spain, the Madrid Pacts had a wider meaning and purpose. At the time, the regime was suffering a serious and possibly terminal crisis, one with both political and economic aspects. In the political sphere, the widespread ostracism and isolation of Spain was beginning to make itself felt. Only a handful of small states had afforded any kind of diplomatic or political recognition to Franco’s regime. A Tripartite Declaration by Britain, France and the US in March 1946 had, according to Whitaker, virtually outlawed Spain while Franco remained in power, and Spain was still excluded from the UN (it would not be admitted until 1955). To make matters worse, a Republican government in exile had set up in Mexico, claiming to be the legitimate political regime. This isolation was echoed in the economic sphere. Spain had not been included in the Marshall Plan, and therefore did not receive the injection of capital that it badly needed.10 Thus both parties stood to gain from the 1953 agreements, although the relationship was a basically unbalanced one, as is explained below. It is certainly true that there was a basic contradiction in the aims of the parties: Spain was keen to use the agreements to legitimise the incumbent regime, but this was something the US wanted to avoid as far as possible; the aim was to secure an ally while avoiding legitimising the domestic regime. The Pacts were in essence an exchange: Spain obtained economic aid in exchange for allowing the US to use naval and air bases on Spanish soil. In assessing the significance of this for


NATO, and for Spanish accession in 1982, it is important to note what was not in the Pacts as much as what was included. Most importantly, the Pacts did not constitute any kind of US security guarantee for Spain. Duke notes that the US was obliged only to ‘take such action as it deemed appropriate to defend its own facilities and personnel’.11 Defending Spain itself was not covered, a clear sign of the unwillingness of the US to be seen as underwriting the Franco regime. However, the difference between defending US facilities and defending Spain was far from clear in practice. If Spain should be attacked, would the US realistically be able to defend its bases without defending Spain itself? Duke describes the idea of placing bases in a country while refusing to make any clear security commitments to that state as ‘rather dubious doublethink’. On the Spanish side, it seemed as though Spain had made itself a prime target in an East–West war with no guarantee of protection if war should actually break out. In 1981, Pérez Lorca (the Conservative Foreign Minister who helped negotiate Spain’s entry in to NATO) described the bilateral relationship as ‘tantamount to satellization’. On the US side, the Eisenhower Administration, which finalised the Pacts, was keenly aware that it could be seen as extending a de facto, if not formal, security commitment to a regime that was widely abhorred, especially by NATO Allies. Therefore it was at great pains to stress that the Pacts did not in fact constitute a security guarantee.12 The US clearly wanted, as Pollack notes, to make Franco ‘a legitimate ally’ in the Cold War, particularly as the strategic challenge perceived to be emanating from the Soviet Union took on a more military and more immediate nature. However, there was a basic difficulty in obtaining a ‘legitimate ally’ without being seen to legitimise the domestic regime of that ally (especially in light of the substantial economic aid that was intrinsic to the Madrid Pacts). For years afterwards, the US would be criticised for bailing out the Franco regime when that regime seemed to be tottering towards collapse. How far economic aid went towards actually legitimising the regime is a difficult question, but it is certainly true that the Pacts, and the recognition that went with them, effectively ended the rival claims of the Republican government in exile to be the rightful government of Spain. In order to make the bilateral agreement work, the US needed the regime that had actually signed the Pacts to survive. Domestically, this meant economic aid, but internationally it meant working to normalise the regime’s relations with other states.13 Before moving on, it is important to examine the continuing oppo-


sition to Spanish membership of the Alliance after 1949. This opposition remained constant, albeit with some shifts in the level of consensus, and has some significant implications for our understanding of Spain’s eventual entry. The prime objection was always to Franco’s regime and the implications of including such a system in the Alliance. Franco might not have been the only West European dictator, but he did represent the last remnant of a particular type of dictator, of which the democracies of West Europe had bitter memories. This had both cultural–religious and ideological overtones. In the former, Franco’s persecution and repression of Protestantism in Spain made his regime markedly more obnoxious to those NATO members with a strong Protestant culture. In the latter, it was a general rule that the more left-wing the political centre of gravity was in a state, and the stronger its trade union movement, the firmer would be the opposition to Franco’s admission. The anti-Spain consensus shifted somewhat with changes of government, but some continuities did emerge. Generally speaking, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands remained unalterably opposed. Britain, France and Canada were unhappy with the idea of Spanish admission, but the US State Department seemed convinced (in the late 1950s at least) that they would accept it. Support came, always, from the US and Portugal. The position of other members is less clear, but for strategic reasons the southern flank members were cautiously in favour. It should be stressed that the opposition was not to Spain as such, but to the incumbent regime. For many of its members, NATO was an organisation of democratic states, rather than simply an anti-Soviet military alliance. Turkey could be accommodated, and Portugal’s dictatorship had less Fascistic origins than Spain’s. Significantly, neither had a history of active antagonism towards West European liberalism. Admitting Franco would be admitting a regime of the very sort that had overturned European democracy in the 1930s and 1940s, and as such was wholly unacceptable. There was a link here with public opinion: the widespread opposition of the European Left to Franco could conceivably translate into dwindling support for NATO membership if Spain was admitted into the Alliance. This does offer a good explanation of why the US never pressed the point in the way it had with Greece, Turkey and Germany, despite the fact that at times there was a ‘critical mass’ of weighty support (Britain, France, Germany, Canada) in Spain’s favour.14 However, opposition was also based on other grounds. In Chapter 4, we saw how early strategic planning centred primarily on defining and


implementing the forward-defence principle. Spain’s exclusion from the original membership, then, meant that strategic planning could be significantly revised if it were to subsequently accede. The Madrid Pacts were, in strategic military terms, an agreement on allowing the US use of Spanish bases; they did not give Spain any other role in NATO planning. Thus accession took on strategic implications that might have been avoided if Spain had been a founding member. Most prominent of these implications was a real concern that including Spain might undermine the forward strategy as a principle. Forward defence became something of an ideology among European NATO members, and was founded in the principle that the continent had to be defended rather than liberated. A key concern was that, in the event of war, the US might be forced to fall back under weight of Soviet numbers, or even that the US actually planned to do this. In such an atmosphere, the prospect of admitting Spain was prone to raising fears that this would provide US and other NATO forces with an option of falling back behind the Pyrennees. This fear was not without foundation. In the early days of NATO planning, there were in fact contingency plans to do just that. The fact that the US was, apart from Portugal, at times the sole proponent of Spanish membership did not help.15 However, this concern was likely to arise in any case. It is true that admitting Spain at a time of heightened European concern about forward defence was likely to exacerbate those concerns, but similarly the bilateral relationship risked arousing similar fears. The US Acting Secretary of State expressed this in 1951 when he pointed out that a bilateral relationship would risk forming a ‘special US–Spanish relationship’.16 This itself ran the risk of increasing ‘Pyrenees’ fears in Europe by establishing a strategic military relationship over which they had no influence. It seems, then, that concern over the Pyrenees possibility would have been heightened whatever Spain’s relationship with NATO and/or the US. Therefore it would be more accurate to describe this as a generic fear over forward defence, rather than as a concern specifically centred on Spain. That said, it is clear that the problems preventing Spain entering NATO were not solely ideological in nature. To summarise, Spain was not a member of NATO, but was nonetheless incorporated into the North Atlantic military system. The Madrid Pacts were bilateral agreements, but their strategic purpose was to coopt Spanish adherence to a multilateral military complex. That the relationship was mutually beneficial is evinced by the fact that the Madrid Pacts were renewed every five years or so with little prolonged difficulty. That the Pacts were not seen as a satisfactory long-term arrangement is


similarly evinced by the fact they never were renewed on more than a short-term basis. Over the 25 years between the signing of the Madrid Pacts and the emergence of Spanish democracy, the Spanish navy and air force slowly became more closely linked with their NATO counterparts in Europe. That it was these two services that became most closely involved with NATO should come as no surprise, for two reasons. First, Spain’s significance to the Alliance was as a strategic point in the Mediterranean (i.e. as a naval base at the entrance to the Sea), and as a rear base for air operations within Europe. Thus the army never figured heavily in Spain’s strategic advantages to NATO. Second, to involve the Spanish Army would probably have entailed links with SHAPE and therefore with NATO’s complex military decision-making structure. It would, in other words, have been politically too close to home. In contrast, the Spanish navy and air force developed extensive links with those of NATO members, particularly the US, Germany, France and Italy. This was particularly true of the navy, which by the end of the 1970s was ‘virtually a NATO force’ according to Klepak. Unlike the army, the Spanish navy had no role in internal security, and was an internationally-minded service, since its role in Spanish Mediterranean policy brought it into inevitable contact with NATO navies. After the Madrid Pacts, it cooperated with the US navy and later the French and Italian services; by the 1970s it had worked in one form or another with all NATO navies, to the extent that it developed standard procedures in line with those operating in NATO ships. A similar situation developed in the air force, which also cultivated links with NATO air forces and adopted NATO procedures.17 Therefore, by the end of the 1970s Spain was a de facto member of the Alliance in two senses. First, the facilities that it granted had become an integral part of NATO strategy and war planning. That this was secure via Pacts with a NATO member was fundamentally beside the point: the bases supplied by Spain were used by the US only in the context of NATO doctrine. For Spain to cancel these agreements would leave a gaping hole in the naval and air strategies of the Alliance, and therefore Spain was, for good or bad, an intrinsic part of the North Atlantic military system. Secondly, Spain’s own navy and air force were themselves increasingly aligned with those of the Alliance in terms of procedure, structure and even language. Thus Spain could not be considered as a European neutral in anything like the way that, say, Ireland could be. In fact, by the close of the 1970s, Spain was such an integral part of the East–West strategic balance that it could not be


described as ‘militarily neutral’ in any meaningful sense of the word. However, while this underlines Spain’s indispensable strategic military importance, its exclusion from the Alliance underlines the extent to which it was disqualified from the political definition of a NATO member. It is true that there was little chance of Spanish neutralism (unlike with Turkey, for example), and thus that the loss to the Alliance through refusal to admit Spain is minimised. That said, it is also clear that military considerations were not determinative in NATO enlargement.

Crisis and continuity in NATO Spain’s accession came at a difficult time for NATO. During the late 1970s the Alliance was beset by a series of crises that either exposed or actively created serious divisions between members. As we shall see, some of these crises were issue-based, and as such the divisions created were the result of disagreement over a particular policy. This was nothing new for NATO: the 1950s debates over strategy and rearmament produced similar problems, although this should not be taken to imply that the 1970s’ problems were less serious or less real. However, by the end of the 1970s NATO was also beginning to feel the effects of deeper structural changes in the international system, particularly the changes engendered by the pattern of West European recovery and integration. Previous expansions had taken place in a situation of military and economic dependence on the US on the part of West European members, and during protracted and heated debates about the shape and purpose of NATO strategy. In such a scenario, the capacity of the US to define NATO’s agenda and membership was substantial. By the 1970s, this had changed. The wave of European economic recovery had continued, and the EEC emerged as a key multilateral vehicle for continued West European prosperity. In practice this meant that West Europe’s economic dependence on the US withered, and the region reemerged as a centre of politico–economic power in its own right. The global recession of the 1970s had a serious effect on growth, and at least one scholar has argued that the 1970s saw a redistribution of economic advantage to the US, but it should be noted that this did not mean a return to European dependence.18 Paradoxically, however, West European military dependence on the US remained unchanged: the superpower was still the key actor in Alliance strategy and military planning. The consequences of this for NATO were


difficult. On the one hand, the military relationship between the US and its European allies remained essentially unchanged in its fundamental features, and thus NATO remained central to West European security policy. On the other, the broader transatlantic relationship of which the Alliance was part was undergoing what Stephen Gill has termed ‘a crisis of hegemony’, or a shift away from the post-war pattern.19 In practice, this meant that West European members could only become more aware of their military reliance, which contrasted so sharply with their politico–economic autonomy. It might be thought that the recognition of dependence might mean fewer problems for a military institution, but in reality the fact that the transatlantic hegemonic consensus was represented most clearly in NATO – the institution which embraced the North American and European states affected – meant that it was in the Alliance too that the restructuring of international politics made itself felt. Thus NATO faced the structural problems caused by a self-confident and economically prosperous group of states that were in a decidedly unequal military relationship with a superpower. To put it another way, Europe in the 1970s had, at the least, the potential to become an economic ‘pole’ in its own right and yet could not realistically aspire to translate this into a nascent military pole. The tightening of the bipolar system during what has been termed the ‘Second Cold War’ compounded this problem. The Second Cold War developed from the breakdown of détente in the late 1970s after a period of comparative cooperation between the superpowers. The key to the re-emergence of confrontation was the US sense, echoed elsewhere in NATO, of diminished status in comparison with the Soviet Union. Therefore the retreat from détente in the 1970s was as much a result of changed perceptions as it was of structural forces. Two aspects of the Second Cold War stand out as particularly relevant for NATO. First, the perennial inferiority complex about the military balance in Europe became markedly more pronounced. This complex had always existed in the field of conventional weapons, and indeed was an important factor in the prominence of nuclear weapons in NATO strategy. However, the 1970s saw a significant increase in Soviet nuclear weapons technology, even with the limitations imposed by arms control. This build-up and the concerns it generated in the West were crucial in the political rise of the Republican hawks who took prominent positions in the Reagan Administration. However, as Kaplan notes, ‘the major response to the Soviet build-up came less from American alarm than from Europe’s belated recognition that the


imbalance was not only in conventional forces . . . but in a new generation of missiles . . . targeted on West European centres’. There was an important Euro-centric dimension to this. The German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, raised concerns about the ‘Eurostrategic balance’, arguing that the US–Soviet SALT negotiations were ignoring and perhaps exacerbating a perceived military imbalance within Europe. In particular, the Soviet deployment of theatre nuclear weapons in Europe seemed, to Schmidt, be going unaddressed, with a consequent question mark being raised about the reliability of the US guarantee.20 Second, the developments within Europe helped create a sense that the European political balance might also be shifting along with the military one. In 1974, Portugal and Greece both experienced dramatic changes of regime, which resulted in governments with a clear influence from the left. This was hardly surprising, given their recent experiences of militarism and autocracy, and Greece went so far as to withdraw from NATO’s military structure. Serious, though unfounded, fears existed about Portugal’s future in NATO. In addition to this, Communist parties within some other NATO members remained an influential factor. ‘Eurocommunism’, a form which had emerged after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and which sought a ‘third way’ between the superpowers, had presented a fresh challenge from the left to the established international order in Europe. It was strongest in Italy and Spain, which were in fact its only real strongholds.21 Because of this, fears over its effects were largely confined to concern about cohesion on the southern flank of the Alliance. The fact that, with the exception of Turkey, all the Alliance members along the Mediterranean were the subject of this permanent concern over their political vocation was rooted in the old idea that the threat posed by the Soviet Union was in part one of subversion from the inside. Whether or not these fears were grounded in anything more substantial than paranoia, they existed and induced a sense that Alliance cohesion might be under threat.22 The addition of Spain was widely viewed as politically important on the southern flank of NATO. Some of NATO’s most intractable debates have been over the admission of its southern members, with a substantial portion of these debates focusing on the reliability of these states as allies, and the argument that they were likely to turn to neutralism if not admitted. This somewhat lofty suspicion persisted for much of NATO’s history, and was not helped by the internal political upheaval in Portugal and Greece, or by the withdrawal of Greece from Alliance military structure. The admission of Spain was useful in two


ways: it would be a useful addition to an area of uncertain allies, and it would possibly be an influence on the other southern allies if a democratic Spain joined the Alliance to make an addition to the Mediterranean contingent in NATO.

NATO and Spanish accession, 1976–86 Spain was by choice an integral part of the North Atlantic military system from the early 1950s, and the possibility of further integration via the Alliance could safely be left for the future, provided that this choice remained unchanged. As long as Franco remained in power, the chances of any military decoupling of Spain from the Atlantic strategic complex were remote. Therefore the modus vivendi established with the Madrid Pacts represented the optimum solution under the circumstances. Several scholars have argued that the US in particular was never interested in promoting democracy in Southern Europe simply for the sake of democracy. Rather, it was keenly interested in promoting stable political regimes that were not susceptible to left-wing overthrow.23 In this sense it was pro-democracy only in the sense that authoritarian regimes tend to be unstable. Thus, while the US might have regarded Franco’s regime with some distaste, the Caudillo represented stability, order and virulent anti-Sovietism: hence the substantial US economic aid to Franco, and the refusal to either recognise the Republican government in exile, or do anything to aid the Republican cause. The US bases in Spain have been described as ‘perhaps the most important network of American bases outside of the United States’. The air base at Torrejon was the HQ of the US 16th Air Force, and the Rota naval base was the second largest of its kind in Europe. Thus Spain’s withdrawal from the bases agreement would have been a major military and psychological blow to the Alliance. However, Franco’s death and the subsequent creation of a pluralist democratic system in Spain raised, probably for the first real time, the question of Spain’s future strategic and political orientation.24 There were effectively three directions which Spanish defence policy could take in the wake of democratisation: a continuation of the bilateral relationship with the US, joining NATO, or opting for a neutralist course akin to that pursued by, for example, Sweden. These are examined more fully below, in the section on Spanish debates about NATO, but are worth noting here, since the Alliance itself was keenly aware that it was not the only, or even the obvious, choice. Therefore, in the immediate post-Franco period, NATO avoided any public sugges-


tion that Spain join the Alliance, for fear that this might have an undesired effect on public debate about the issue in Spain. The Madrid Pacts had been the subject of great controversy in Spain, particularly with the left, who argued that they represented a policy forged by Franco’s regime. Thus the agreements had unsavoury connotations in democratic Spain, and for these reasons, NATO members were cautious about raising the subject of renewing the Pact relationship through any channels.25 NATO members were very aware that if they were seen to be pressurising Spain in any way, regardless of whether this was actually intended, then the task of the pro-NATO lobby would be markedly more difficult. This was because national sensitivities demanded that, if Spain did join NATO, this be seen to be a Spanish decision made for Spanish reasons, rather than one prompted by external pressure or Alliance needs. However, occasional statements were made to the effect that NATO would be greatly enhanced by Spanish membership, although these statements always came with a clear proviso that the choice was entirely a Spanish one. The membership question began in earnest in June 1980, when the Spanish Foreign Minister, Marcelino Oreja, unexpectedly announced that Spain would seek NATO membership as soon as possible. NATO’s past enlargements were almost invariably controversial. However, the most striking aspect of the debate over Spain is that there was in fact very little debate within the Alliance. In sharp contrast to the deep opposition to Spanish membership under Franco, the admission of democratic Spain was almost uniformly welcomed. This is testament both to the ideas of NATO’s founders that Spain was always a future member, and to the fact that the opposition to Spanish membership was almost entirely ideological. That this consensus within the Alliance emerged from a very early post-Franco stage is clear: The Economist reported in July 1977 that ‘the opposition within NATO is almost gone’. This did not change: in 1981, after the Spanish declaration of intent, it was noted that approval by the Alliance ‘would be a formality. All the NATO countries want Spain to join.’26 There were, to be sure, some lingering reservations among some NATO members, especially Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. These doubts were largely concerned with the permanence of Spanish democracy, and were quickly dispelled. A final set of questions was raised by Portugal, of which more below. The accession, then, was viewed as beneficial on a wide consensus, for a mixture of political and military reasons, which provide an interesting picture of NATO’s nature.27


The accession to NATO of post-Franco Spain was conceived, from a very early stage, in terms of a wider project. The first renewal of the Madrid Pacts after Franco’s death came in the form of the US–Spanish Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in September 1976. As well as renewing the basic arrangement, the Treaty paved the way for increasing coordination of the US–Spanish defence relationship with that of the North Atlantic area. This was expressed most clearly in the Treaty’s statement that ‘the proper course of evolution should include, as major political objectives, the integration of Spain into the institutions of Europe and the North Atlantic Defense System’. Thus the Madrid Pacts began to evolve from a bilateral arrangement into a way to promote Spanish integration into multilateral organisations (although the fact that the Treaty only mentioned the Atlantic defence system, rather than explicitly citing NATO, is evidence of the tentativeness of this step).28 Thus the question of Spanish membership was always a latent one from 1976 to 1980, an issue that was being waited upon. And yet the Alliance did have viable and important political reasons for desiring Spanish membership.29 In the short term, the accession of a new West European democracy would be a welcome fillip at a time of such disconsensus within NATO. The symbolic nature of this should not be underestimated. The Alliance had always placed a premium on its cohesion, and with members divided over key policies, the accession of a new member clearly implied that NATO was still sufficiently cohesive to be attractive to non-members. Similarly, in the longer term, the concept of a new democracy joining the Alliance lent added weight to the idea of NATO as a democratic alliance. The very reason for Franco’s exclusion from the Alliance – his lack of democratic credentials – became the reason for including Spain once Francoism had died. This was driven partly by the suspicion of neutralism that had been evident in the accession of Italy, Greece and Turkey. In a tightened bloc system, particularly one with the ideological overtones of Cold War Europe, NATO needed to maintain an image as a democratic institution. To put it another way, the more democracies in Western Europe that chose to stay out of the Alliance, the weaker NATO’s political underpinnings would be. Arguably this could weaken the cohesion between its own member democracies if West European democracies no longer saw a need to remain in the Alliance as a part of belonging to the wider West European political–economic project. Therefore, it was important that a newly formed democracy should be in the Alliance not only in terms of short-term image, but in the


more fundamental sense that NATO continued to be intrinsically linked to the idea of European integration.30 Thus, while European leaders publicly separated the question of Spain joining NATO with that of it joining the EEC, in reality the two were much more closely linked. For Spain to join the EEC, and by implication the West European politico–economic bloc, it was important for the Alliance that it also join the military–strategic wing of that bloc. The Alliance was a Western institution as well as an anti-Soviet military alliance. If this role was to be maintained and consolidated, it was clearly important that Spain, in subscribing to this project, should subscribe to all of its manifestations, including the strategic ones. Moreover, bearing in mind that Spain had become a de facto Alliance member under Franco (in terms of its importance in strategic planning), strategic non-alignment would have amounted to withdrawal from the strategic complex that the Alliance embodied. With hindsight, it is of course possible that these fears were exaggerated, but they should not be lightly dismissed. The implications for NATO of Spanish accession were therefore closely bound up with concepts of the Alliance itself. It is difficult to envisage the consequences for NATO had Spain declined to join, but it is fair to say that a certain role could have been weakened. In the pressured atmosphere of the Second Cold War, this was probably reason enough in itself for NATO to have a keen interest in acquiring this new member. As Treverton argues, ‘from NATO’s perspective the political symbolism [of Spanish accession] is as least as important as the military calculations’.31 However, other reasons also gave an added impetus to enlargement. These were concerned with how to preserve and institutionalise Spain’s military advantages to the Alliance. The Madrid Pacts made strategic sense largely – probably only – in the context of the wider North Atlantic military system embodied in the Alliance. Since the bipolar confrontation that necessitated the Pacts had undergone little change in its strategic essentials, it is safe to assume that the key strategic military requirements served in the agreements were the same in 1982 as they were in 1953. The issue to be tackled is whether, and why, NATO’s strategic priorities could be better served by Spanish membership. In geostrategic terms, Spain’s significance to both the Alliance and to the West European economy had if anything increased since the signing of the Madrid Pacts. When the Pacts were signed, it was as a part of a wider US initiative to gain a meaningful strategic foothold in the Mediterranean. As North Atlantic naval strategy developed into plans


for bipolar war, the strategic context of the Mediterranean began to change. NATO’s maritime strategy in the late 1970s emphasised increased cooperation between naval forces in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and hence greater coordination of the two theatres. Moreover, the development of long-range Trident submarine technology meant that the Mediterranean, where submarines were more vulnerable than in the Atlantic, was de-emphasised as a theatre for submarine warfare.32 For these reasons, the Mediterranean was more a part of the Atlantic system than a theatre in its own right, especially as the bulk of West European oil supplies now came via the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean and Suez.33 The implications of this for Spanish membership of the Alliance are significant. Whilst the Atlanticist context had always been a significant factor in the perpetuation of the bilateral relationship, the context had undergone subtle but important change since the signing of the Pacts. If the principal strategic importance of the Mediterranean was that of ‘an appendage of the Atlantic’, then it is clearly more advantageous for Spain to be more closely integrated into overall NATO naval planning. The bilateral relationship, then, was becoming strategically outdated. Nonetheless, the Mediterranean was still a key strategic location for Western Europe. Preston and Smyth note that Spain occupied a ‘unique geopolitical situation’ across ‘a crossroads of international commerce and communications’ that was of political importance to the EEC and of military importance to NATO. This underlines the inseparability of the two institutions; a set of economic and strategic interests that intersected in West Europe and found expression through the key international organisations of the West European states. Again, this highlights the generally unsatisfactory nature of the bilateral pacts: with West Europe increasingly interdependent in economic terms, and with a network of shared interests becoming embedded in the EEC, the cooption of Spain as a vital part of the political–strategic network by bilateral means was a clear anomaly. Another aspect of Spain’s geopolitical importance to the Alliance pertained to a potential role in a European air–land battle, and paradoxically this was one reason for the reluctance of the US to press too hard for Spanish membership in the 1950s. Spain’s material contribution was limited, especially in a short-war scenario, by the structure and advancement of its armed forces. However, a protracted war of the kind envisaged in NATO planning contained a clear role for Spain of the kind utilised in the Madrid Pacts. This role would be that of a rear base for


operations or a potential regrouping of NATO forces. Klepak argues that ‘It is clear to any military analyst that NATO lacks [geographical] depth’, and that this lack of depth has been a perennial problem for NATO planners. Including Spain in the Alliance, therefore, would provide a relatively secure base for logistics and air operations away from the battle zone on the Central Front. This is another area in which most analysts are agreed that Spain has an indispensable role to play.34 A second potential use of Spain in this scenario was as a possible fallback position, should a war in Europe go badly, from which to launch a counter-attack. At the time of the Madrid Pacts, discussing Spanish membership in these terms would potentially exacerbate European concerns over the forward strategy, but by the 1970s this had dissipated. In the early 1950s, the forward strategy was still in the process of being implemented; over the next 30 years it had become an institutionalised standard practice. Spain, therefore, has an intrinsic geostrategic significance to West Europe, and thereby to the EEC and NATO. Because the significance was largely geostrategic, this state was always a potential member of both organisations regardless of its own material capabilities. For that reason, there was an almost universal consensus in the literature on Spanish accession that Spain was of clear geopolitical importance to NATO; disagreement is almost entirely concerned with how this importance was best acted upon. The significance or otherwise of Spain’s potential material contribution is the subject of considerably less consensus. Where there is consensus on the issue, it is generally on the argument that a Spanish contribution to the European Central Front would be limited.35 The limited possibilities for a Spanish role in the Central Front were a result of the state of the Spanish armed forces. The army in particular was the most traditionalist and least advanced (in technological and doctrinal terms) of the Spanish services, and was clearly unsuited for early integration with NATO armies. Its traditional role had always been that of an internal security force in Franco’s Spain, and for it to develop any real contribution to NATO would have necessitated an extensive restructuring in terms of equipment, doctrine and role-perception. The paradox of this was that whilst the army was the service with the least applicability to NATO strategy, it was the very service which democratic Spain itself most wanted to be influenced by NATO doctrine. This paradox is discussed later. It will suffice here to say that the army could provide little to the main area of NATO conventional force structure. Although the other two services were considerably more internation-


alist than the army, they too were in need of modernisation. Owing to Spain’s geographical position, the navy was clearly the service with the most to offer NATO, through an increased Alliance presence in the Mediterranean and Spanish participation in IBERLANT, NATO’s naval command west of the Iberian Peninsula. This underlines Spain’s geopolitical situation at a set of strategic intersections. One scholar has likened the Iberian Peninsula to a four-sided house with windows opening in all directions.36 IBERLANT was clearly a field where Spain’s contribution would be maximised, but Alliance politics meant that this was also a field of considerable difficulty. Owing to the fact that only one of the two Iberian states, Portugal, was a NATO member for so long, that state inevitably acquired a central role in the IBERLANT command. For a variety of reasons, the Portuguese government was loath to accept any substantial Spanish presence in the command. In fact, Jed Snyder notes that Portugal informed its NATO allies that it ‘would never accept a Spanish commander for IBERLANT’.37 It should be borne in mind that this was essentially a question of how Spain should be integrated into NATO, rather than whether it should be incorporated at all. The subsequent refusal of Spain to join the Alliance military structure, however, meant that this issue could be shelved.

The Spanish decision to join NATO38 Earlier in this chapter, we saw how Spain’s historical security experiences differed sharply from those of West European NATO members. Few of the defining historical experiences of the latter were shared by Spain, and moreover the states confronted by the Alliance had rarely, if ever, figured with any prominence in Spain’s pre-Franco experience. Martorell notes that ‘Spain did not experience directly the reconstruction of Europe, the process of decolonisation . . . détente’ or any ‘other constitutive elements of the contemporary international scene’. In the post-Franco period, this was to continue. Spain did not define the principle threats to its individual security in terms of the Soviet Union or the Cold War, but focused on the Moroccan claim to the strategically important Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and the continuing British possession of Gibraltar. Neither of these would be covered by the NATO guarantee, although Spain made several (unsuccessful) attempts to obtain Alliance cover for the Moroccan enclaves, and to link its NATO application to the opening of Anglo–Spanish negotiations on Gibraltar. Neither was successful, and therefore the link between Spanish threat


perception and NATO membership must be explained in a wider context.39 (i) NATO membership and Spanish threat perception Klepak argues that threat perceptions in Spain had been drifting away from those of NATO members in the post-war period, and therefore Spain had to take account of European threat perceptions if it was to have any sense of ‘sharing the general destiny of Western Europe’. Therefore while joining NATO would not address any individual Spanish threat perceptions, it would involve joining a broader political project in which shared perceptions of strategy and threat were paramount.40 This accession does seem a curious inversion of traditional logic about alliances. To properly understand Spain’s reasons for joining NATO, we need to look first of all at the wider context of Spanish foreign policy. As noted earlier, a paradox of post-Franco Spanish foreign policy was the widespread internal Spanish consensus on joining the EEC but remaining out of NATO, contrasting with the EEC’s opposition to early Spanish entry and the willingness of the Alliance to admit Spain at the earliest opportunity.41 The Spanish consensus on EEC membership was a cross-party one: even the Socialist and Communist parties were more concerned with transformation rather than rejection of the EEC. The Community was not only a necessity for Spain’s long-term economic health, but also represented ‘political as well as economic acceptance by Europe, thereby demonstrating continental confidence in the consolidation of Spain’s democracy’.42 Despite attempts to treat membership of the EEC and NATO as separate issues, in practice they were closely linked, and the government planned to enter NATO as a tactical ploy to encourage West European members to look more favourably on EEC entry. The continuing opposition to early entry into the Common Market – the key aim in Spanish foreign policy – was troublesome, and it was hoped that the NATO option could be used to exert some leverage over the common members of the two institutions. The Spanish gambit was to convince EEC members that early membership (which they opposed) would soothe domestic Spanish opposition to NATO membership (which they desired). The Spanish leader, González, stated publicly in November 1985 that permanent membership of the Alliance was directly linked to entry into the EEC.43 However, there were other factors at work here, not least the unpopularity in Spain of the Madrid Pacts. In the first place, the Pacts were a relic of Franco’s defunct and discredited regime. Second, they were


clearly imbalanced: Spain essentially provided a service in return for very little in the way of security guarantees. Put another way, Spain provided the sort of facilities expected of a NATO member with none of the benefits afforded by Article 5, and thus NATO membership afforded an opportunity to maintain the facilities provided while obtaining a more mutually satisfactory balance of obligations. Despite the fact that Article 5 did not cover, for example, the Moroccan enclaves, the security guarantee embodied in it would nonetheless have had political significance as a more balanced relationship. Third, many in Spain resented the relationship that the Pacts embodied, particularly on the left. In their perspective, the US had stepped in to prop up the Franco regime at a time of possibly terminal difficulties, and had helped sustain the regime for far longer than its natural lifespan. González stated very plainly that ‘America helped Europe to free itself from fascism, but it not only did not help Spain but condemned it to dictatorship for many more years’. Therefore, NATO represented a way to dilute this relationship and channel it into a more multilateral framework. This became apparent after the possibility of neutralism had been discounted for reasons we have already examined. If Spain’s strategic alignment was to remain, it was important that this be accommodated along different lines.44 NATO membership and domestic reform There were, therefore, clear externally generated reasons for Spain to wish to join the Alliance, even though its own individual security concerns would not be significantly addressed by NATO membership. There were also some clear internal reasons for accession, which were based on the envisaged effect on membership on certain aspects of Spanish politics. The Europeanisation programme in Spain was not simply about the redrawing of Spanish foreign relations in the economic and political fields, but was also concerned with the post-Franco democratic process within Spanish society. The modernisation of the Spanish economy, which had begun under Franco in 1960s, had opened up a widening fissure between the modernising and traditionalist wings of the Franco state.45 It became increasingly difficult to promote a technologically modern economy, with the materialist–capitalist ethos that such a programme requires, whilst still maintaining public loyalty to a traditionalist and authoritarian state.46 There was also an international dimension to these changes. Schmitter notes that Spain, in common with Portugal, Greece and Turkey, had ‘become enmeshed in a complex


network of regional institutions, commercial exchanges, political pressures, treaty obligations . . . and normative expectations’. In other words, the external setting of Spain played an important role in democratisation. A key reason that this tension did not drag down Franco’s regime was the role played in the Francoist state by the army. We saw earlier that the prime role of Franco’s army was the internal imposition of his state, a role for which it had become adept. The Economist noted in 1977 that the army was ‘a first rate force for the kind of role General Franco required of it – the preservation of the institutional order’. Thus the army came to see itself as being the guardian of the Spanish state, and this perception of its role persisted after the end of the Franco regime. Because of this, King Juan-Carlos made careful attempts during the immediate post-Franco period to cultivate the loyalty of the military in favour of a democratic regime. To this end, he appointed a pro-democrat as the military’s representative in the Spanish Cabinet, with a brief to make the Spanish armed forces more ‘ideologically compatible’ with those of the Alliance. With the air and naval forces, this was not a problem, and thus the army was clearly the main point of reference for this policy. Moreover, the wider aim of ‘ideological compatibility’ was clearly to neutralise the army as a political force in Spanish politics, in much the same way as General de Gaulle had done with the French army 20 years before. As Vilanova notes, the key theme in the construction of democracy in Spain was ‘the delimitation of army intervention as an institution’.47 Maravell and Santamaría have noted that new post-authoritarian democracies are at their most fragile in their early stages, before democratic principles become embedded and institutionalised as practices. That the Spanish army contained a clear anti-democratic constituency was demonstrated by the attempted military coup of 23 February 1981 – or 23-F, as it is known in Spain. Gilmour also claims that between 1978 and 1982, the army ‘plotted at least five coups d’état against the democratic regime’. However, there was also a growing group of younger officers who viewed the army’s political role as inappropriate in the post-Franco period and therefore detrimental to the army’s status in Spanish society. It therefore seems as though the army had in fact been permeated to some extent by the same modernising forces that had been at work in Spain for some years prior to Franco’s death, and which had been the driving influence on the democratic project (a key reason for the army’s isolation under Franco was the prevention of just such an infiltration by anti-traditionalist thinking). The task, therefore, was to consolidate this element by a wholesale re-evaluation of the army’s edu-


cation and role-perception. In Sanchez-Gijon’s words, it would be a fundamental change in the relationship between the military and society in Spain.48 The problem was not the military itself, but rather a particular type of anti-liberal traditionalism that was embedded in a certain section of the army and perpetuated by the army’s insular caste-like ethos. There were two ways in which NATO was a potentially useful tool in this process. First, access to its highly modernised and technologically advanced doctrine and strategy could conceivably provide the modernising factors that Spain itself lacked: the problem with modernising the army was that the service had had no access to such modernising factors for decades, and therefore external sources were required. As a multilateral organisation containing the world’s most up-to-date militaries, NATO was an unequalled source of modernisation in terms of both technology and doctrine.49 Second, and less materially, Spain’s long isolation coupled with the internally directed role of the army had produced a generation of officers whose defining military experiences had been the Civil War and the guaranteeing of the Franco regime. Therefore it was necessary to change army culture as well as army technology and doctrine. Again, accessing the very different defining experiences of NATO armies was a potential way of reorienting military culture away from domestic politics. This is possibly the main way in which NATO could directly address an individual Spanish perception of threat: it was careful to distance itself from the issues of Ceuta, Melilla and Gibraltar, but another principal threat to Spain lay in its own political discontents. Thus NATO was a potential way to underpin a particular domestic regime, rather than tackling territorial disputes like the Moroccan enclaves. This is an interesting parallel with the Madrid Pacts which, as we have seen, were aimed at the legitimisation of the Franco regime as an ally. The bilateral relationship, however, was unlikely to provide the kind of modernising influence that was required for the Spanish army, since it required only Spanish facilities rather than an active military contribution. This argument for Spanish membership of the Alliance has not been the subject of agreement. It found most favour on the centre-right Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) party, which formed the administration that took Spain into NATO. President Calvo Sotelo of the UCD argued that NATO membership would ‘kill at birth any attempted coup’ such as 23-F. The Spanish left and centre-left, initially hostile to NATO, gradually abandoned this position in favour of a pro-NATO policy,


explicitly citing the depoliticisation of the army as a key benefit of Alliance membership. However, the change in the left’s position on NATO membership was driven by pragmatism rather than ideological considerations: the link between EEC membership and joining the Alliance was accepted as a fact of life, and all parties were in favour of joining the EEC. Thus the period after the Spanish decision to join NATO saw the gradual emergence of a broad cross-party consensus. Moreover, this was not confined to the political debate in Spain, but was shared within the Alliance.50 Assessing the extent to which NATO could, in fact, play an active role in consolidating democracy in Spain requires an assessment of how Spanish democracy and the post-Franco political system could be destabilised. There are good reasons for regarding Spanish democracy, even in its infant stages, as fundamentally sound. Several writers have noted that the political transition was more evolutionary than revolutionary: the transition to democracy took place after a long period of socio– economic change within Spain. Because of this, many of the political components of a modern West European state were emerging before Franco’s death, and thus the democratic system was not imposed upon a socially authoritarian culture. Because of this, it has been argued that 23-F, by dint of its swift failure, demonstrated the strength rather than the weakness of Spanish democracy.51 Therefore it seems safe to say that threats to Spanish democracy were not generally to be found within Spanish political or social culture (the Basque terrorists were separatists, and not aiming at the overthrow of Spanish democracy). In the light of this, the anti-democratic elements in the army appear to be an isolated constituency (as might be expected in a ‘hermetically sealed institution’), and so it does seem that NATO could conceivably have played a role in the reorientation of the army. It seems clear that the principal threat to Spanish democracy lay in the army, and if we accept that participation in NATO’s multilateral military infrastructure inevitably affects a service’s perception of its doctrine and responsibilities, then it seems reasonable to suppose that this could help in reorienting the role of the Spanish army away from domestic intervention. If the anti-democrats within the army could have called upon wider support within Spanish society, then there would be good reasons for scepticism about the capacity of the Alliance to affect domestic politics. The fact that the leaders of 23-F manifestly had no such support indicates that it was the army that was the principal internal source of suspicion about Spanish democracy, and this was a clear area in which Alliance membership would have clear implications.


One reason for dismissing the case for NATO as reducing the potential for a coup in Spain is the fact that coups have taken place in Greece and Portugal, both long-time members of the Alliance. Moreover, the dismissive attitude of the US to 23-F – which the Secretary of State brushed off as a purely domestic matter – seems to back the argument that NATO, and the US in particular, were interested only in a stable pro-Western regime in Spain, rather than in a democratic one. Two counter-arguments present themselves in response to this. First, it is deterministic and apolitical to use the Greek and Portuguese examples as themselves reasons for dismissing the case for NATO aiding the recasting of Spanish army doctrine. Both the former coups took place in states with histories of political instability, and the evolutionary nature of political transition in Spain was not mirrored in Greece. The leaders of 23-F were acting with very little support outside of their own constituency in the army. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the military coup in Portugal was a case of the army overthrowing an autocracy and implementing a democracy; the reverse was the case with 23-F. Second, the US response to the coup did indeed indicate unwillingness to get involved, but the real issue is not whether NATO would act if the army took control in Spain, but whether NATO membership would help prevent such an occurrence. In summary, the case for NATO as a significant influence upon the doctrine and role-perception of the Spanish army looks, at the least, a plausible one. However, the opportunity to put this to the test appeared to have been lost when, in 1986, Spain elected not to join NATO’s integrated military structure. Before concluding this chapter, we need to examine the reasons for this decision, and its implications. Stopping short: the 1986 referendum and its consequences Spain joined the Alliance in May 1982, after completion of the ratification process by NATO members. The speed of this process – seven months – testifies to the strength of the intra-Alliance consensus on Spanish membership. It was agreed that negotiations on how Spain was to be incorporated into the military structure would proceed after accession. With the bilateral treaty renewed until 1987 there was no undue pressure to accomplish this quickly. Initially, the establishment of a Madrid NATO command was planned, with Spain taking responsibility for the Canaries–Gibraltar–Balearic region. In this way, it was possible that the IBERLANT question with Portugal would be smoothed over, if not resolved. At the time, there seemed to be no real question that Spain would join the military structure, and that only the modalities required


working out. However, negotiations on the Madrid command were suspended after the Spanish socialist party (PSOE) won a landslide victory in the elections of October 1982.52 The PSOE’s position on NATO was, in Story’s words, ‘highly ambiguous’. The party had moved from opposition to a qualified resistance, to a qualified support and a commitment to a national referendum on membership (which the UCD and President Sotelo had declined to do). However, it is important to note that this opposition was more pragmatic than ideological: the view of the PSOE was that Spain’s immediate security problems would neither be resolved nor addressed by membership of the Alliance. Thus it would be accurate to say that the PSOE accepted the necessity of joining NATO as a political act, but resisted military integration for reasons discussed below. And so one of the first acts of the new administration after it took power was to freeze the negotiations on military integration, in December 1982.53 In contrast to the PSOE’s largely practical position on joining NATO, the party perspective on security in Europe, and thereby on how best to participate in the Alliance, had a philosophical element, as well as simple pragmatic calculation. Story notes that ‘As a non-nuclear country, Spain had an interest in promoting a reduction in the nuclear component of European security, while working for a stabilisation of conventional forces’.54 Therefore, while the PSOE accepted the necessity of joining NATO, its freeze on military integration was rooted in a vision of security in Europe as well as considerations of Spain’s own security needs. The lack of harmony between Spain’s key security concerns and those of NATO members has already been noted, and the freeze is evidence of an unwillingness to be drawn too closely into the military dimensions of the Cold War. This is evident in the terms of the 1986 referendum on Spanish entry, which was worded as follows: The government considers it in the national interest that Spain remain in the Atlantic Alliance and resolves that established on the following terms: 1. The participation of Spain in the Atlantic Alliance will not include its incorporation into the integrated military structure. 2. The prohibition on the installation, storing or introducing nuclear arms on Spanish territory will be continued. 3. The progressive reduction of the military presence of the United States in Spain will be proceeded with. Do you consider it advisable for Spain to remain in the Atlantic Alliance according to the terms set forth by the Government of the nation?55


However, as well as the philosophical element, the freeze on integration was also linked to more pragmatic considerations. González, the PSOE leader and Premier, was keenly aware that his party was not united behind him on the subject of NATO membership, and that many on the left would prefer to see Spain out of the Alliance altogether. A Cabinet reshuffle in July 1985 strengthened the pro-NATO camp. González himself, once opposed to NATO membership, underwent a conversion after the application to join the Alliance was submitted. Hence he was careful to walk a fine line between the necessity of joining NATO in order to further his European gambit, and the widespread opposition to joining the Alliance. Moreover, the wording of the referendum suggests that this was not so much a referendum on remaining a NATO member, but remaining on current terms. It was, in effect, a referendum on the PSOE’s NATO policy, and therefore it does not follow, despite some suggestions, that a vote of ‘no’ would have necessitated Spanish withdrawal from the Alliance. A closer reading of the referendum question shows that there is a clear mandate for the way forward if the result was affirmative, but that the implications of a negative vote are far less clear: a ‘no’ vote would merely mean that the government’s policy on how Spain was to operate in the Alliance was rejected. Conceivably, a voter who favoured full military integration, and a voter who favoured withdrawal from NATO, would both have voted ‘no’. This was almost certainly a deliberate ploy, as it was by no means clear that an affirmative vote would in fact be secured. The PSOE had a manifesto commitment to a referendum, but it became clear that it would need to be carefully timed so as to obtain a positive result.56 By 1984 it was becoming clear that González was developing a strategy for winning the referendum: he would need to (a) maintain the freeze on military integration; and (b) be able to show some progress on the application to join the EEC.57 Despite the fact that Spain did join the EEC in 1986, the prospects for a ‘yes’ vote were not certain.58 The implications of a ‘no’ vote were similarly unclear, due largely to the ambiguous wording of the referendum question itself. The returns were: • Yes: 52 per cent • No: 40 per cent • Blank votes: 7 per cent59 Thus the PSOE’s policy received a public mandate. The task after the referendum was to reconcile Spain’s obligations to the North Atlantic


defence system with the priorities of the Spanish government. This was achieved by a complex series of negotiations and agreements. First of all, the bilateral treaty with the US, the 1976 form of which had laid the groundwork for Spain’s NATO membership, was revised and renewed. The 1982 version, the Agreement on Friendship, Defence and Cooperation, stood with a new Protocol added in February 1983. This states categorically that the bases agreement did not prejudice the NATO question. In effect this meant that Spain had a free hand in deciding how far to be integrated into the Alliance, since its key assets to NATO were secured via a non-Alliance agreement. Spain could, therefore, stop short of military integration without alienating its West European neighbours and thereby affecting its EEC policy. On the face of it, this would not seem to have been an optimum solution for Spain, bearing in mind the unpopularity of the Madrid Pacts. The PSOE government was effectively caught between two stools, and resolved the situation by plotting a course between the Madrid Pacts and the Alliance. The bilateral treaty with the US was recast after 1983 during lengthy negotiations.60 By 1988, agreement was reached and published in a Joint Declaration, the terms of which were as follows: The Governments of Spain and the United States have reached an understanding on the new framework to replace the Cooperation, Defence and Friendship Agreement of 1982. 1. Following this new defensive agreement, the United States will continue to use the support installations in Spain as well as the authorisation to use Spanish territory, sea and air space in times of crisis or war, in support of NATO’s reinforcement plans. 2. The initial term of the new agreement will be eight years . . . 3. In fulfilment of the Spanish Government’s sovereign decision, the United States will withdraw the Tactical Combat Wing 401 from Spain . . . 4. No commitment on either side with regard to military or economic aid in the form of credit or a donation will figure in the agreement or be related to it. 5. Future cooperation on education, culture or science and technology will be based on new and equitable formulas. This cooperation will be separated from the new defensive agreement.61 The main significance of the agreement is that it ended the quid pro quo of the Madrid Pacts – military facilities in exchange for economic aid for the Franco regime. As Rodrigo notes, ‘Spain was now a normal


ally, and therefore the military facilities given to US troops were its contribution to allied defence’.62 Similarly protracted negotiations followed in NATO. Two aspects stand out. First, by the time the PSOE government froze NATO military negotiations, Spain had already been incorporated into the Defence Planning Committee, the Military Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. Despite the commitments on the military structure (which clearly implied non-participation in the Military Committee), Spain decided, in autumn 1984, to remain in all committees. There were two reasons for this. In the first place, it would assist in the reorientation of the armed forces and, by implication, the consolidation of democracy in Spain. In the second place, Spain badly needed to modernise its armed forces and its defence policy if it was to successfully rewrite the Madrid Pacts. This anomalous Spanish participation, a product of circumstance rather than design, did cause some friction within the Alliance, particularly as Spain contributed to the civil budgets, but not to the military ones. However, few NATO members wished to jeopardise González and the referendum, and González, for his part, had no wish to diminish Spain’s role in the Alliance by withdrawing from its most influential committees. Moreover, the fact that France was also a non-member of the military structure made it harder to refuse a similar position for Spain. The second outstanding aspect of the Spain–NATO negotiations was the final agreement on coordinating Spanish forces and allied command. Since Spain was not to be further incorporated into the military structure, coordination between Spain and NATO was the preferred option. The agreement eventually signed referred to ‘the carrying out of sea and air operations in the eastern Atlantic and the air defence of Spanish territory’. The significance of this is that Spain’s NATO duties would be carried out clearly within Spain’s own ‘strategic zone of national interest’, via the new Madrid command rather than through IBERLANT. The post-accession negotiations were considerably more complex than those that preceded Spanish membership, but in the end they achieved what seems to have been an optimum workable solution for both Spain and the Alliance. For Spain, the Madrid Pacts had been modified into a more normal treaty arrangement, and the aspects most closely identified with Franco’s regime were removed. Its contribution to the Alliance had been achieved via both the new Madrid Pacts and cooperation with (rather than in) NATO, but without seriously preju-


dicing either its non-military policy or its goals regarding the army. For NATO, the facilities granted by the bilateral treaties were secured, it had achieved an added contribution to its south-eastern flank, and potentially damaging arguments over command arrangements between Portugal and Spain had been avoided. The overall implications of the accession for the Alliance can now be assessed.

Conclusions In many ways, Spain’s accession to NATO was a long-term process of entanglement, as well as an enlargement of the Alliance. Certainly it is true to say that the incorporation of Spain into the North Atlantic military complex began long before the actual accession, and that this incorporation continued after 1982 as negotiations on the military structure went on. In this way, this expansion of the Alliance is unique among the Cold War enlargements, and bears some comparison with the postCold War expansion. Moreover, an examination of the process during the immediate post-Franco period up to the accession reveals an interesting blend of short-term political trade-offs and longer-term priorities. Spain joined the Alliance in large part because it had to, rather than by making a clear choice that joining NATO would address its own security concerns. There are two aspects to this. First, Spain’s incorporation into the North Atlantic system under Franco meant that withdrawal from this system would have had a serious effect on the strategic planning of other members, and thereby jeopardised its EEC policy. Second, the very act of joining the EEC entailed subscribing to a clear set of strategic priorities which Spain did not necessarily share, but which it nonetheless needed to partake of. Joining the West European project necessarily meant that Spain’s strategic outlook had to broadened to a continental scale. From an Alliance perspective, Spanish membership also demonstrated short- and long-term factors. The enlargement represented an opportunity for a beleaguered institution to claim itself vital enough to attract an emergent democracy as a new member, and also was a useful addition to a flank that was the subject of perennial concern among members. In a longer-term perspective, the accession strengthened the position of the Alliance as the key intra-West European security organisation. External factors NATO’s external setting at the time of the Spanish accession shows both continuity and change, illustrated by the accession. The strategic envi-


ronment set in place by the Cold War remained firmly in place, with no significant changes in its strategic structure. In fact, after a lull during the late 1960s–early 1970s, this strategic structure had been reasserted with a vengeance, to a degree not seen since the period of NATO’s past accessions. However, the effect of this strategic setting produced a qualitatively different affect upon the accession. This was due to the key change in NATO’s external setting: the economic revival and integration of West Europe. We can look at each of these in turn. The Second Cold War did not so much produce new strategic– military concerns as reinforce old ones. Most prevalent was a sense that the strategic military balance was shifting away from the West. Spain’s contribution here was not so much material as geostrategic; it simply occupied an important position and because of this was a significant ally. However, this had been dealt with the via the Madrid Pacts for 30 years before Spanish entry into the Alliance, and therefore the accession did not secure any new strategic assets so much as secure present ones via a different framework. The key consequence that the Cold War produced in NATO with regard to Spanish accession was in the political effects the enlargement would have on the Alliance itself. The Second Cold War had induced renewed fears over the fundamental cohesion of the Alliance. The problems over the dual-track decision were one public symptom of this discord, but the underlying malaise was more political than military. The effects of incorporating a new democracy, as part of a wider programme of Spanish reacceptance into West European institutions, were two-fold in their advantageousness to the Alliance. In the first place, including a new democracy had important implications for the legitimacy of the Alliance, in that it bolstered the sometimes shaky concept of NATO as an organisation of liberal democracies bound by common political philosophies. Second, the accession helped to strengthen the transatlantic bond at a time when that bond seemed to be loosening. This loosening was not only a result of the Second Cold War, but also of West European revival and integration in the post-war era. The reliance of West Europe on the US had been whittled away in the economic sphere, but remained in place in military and thereby political terms. The structural tensions that this produced were mitigated by the fact that Spain joined NATO at the same time that it pressed for entry into the EEC. This leads us to the second change in NATO’s external setting: the change in the politico–economic environment in West Europe. The changes in the West European core region, the region which NATO was designed to underpin, involved a high degree of political and economic


convergence, sufficient to make West Europe the most heavily integrated region of sovereign states in the world. Of necessity, and by its very nature, this integration process pulled the issue of ideological homogeneity to centre-stage. The analysis in this chapter clearly shows that, by the time of Spanish accession, NATO was inextricably bound up with this political process of constructing a European identity. As a consequence, subscription to this idea meant subscription to its military–strategic as well as politico–economic manifestations. In summary, by the late 1970s, the Alliance had become firmly embedded into the security politics of both East–West and West–West relations; in Raymond Aron’s phrase, it had become ‘routinized’, into an integral part of the way in which its members handled mutual security concerns between themselves.63 It is important to bear in mind that the threat seen to be posed by the Soviet Union was defined as directly military only in a secondary sense. The key threat was defined as the threat of division among members and a consequent disintegration of international political and economic structure in West Europe. In this way, the necessary response was to maintain the military balance, and maintain the unity and cohesion of its members. Thus NATO’s key task for its member states was the fostering of cohesion and by extension the implementation of habits of cooperation. It was, in short, to foster institutionalised cooperation in military affairs in the same way that the EEC fostered such cooperation in the economic sphere. This was done via the extensive network of committees, and by the pooling of military resources into a single integrated strategy. The task and rationale for enlargement, then, was to envelop a new member into network of cooperative norms in order to make decoupling very difficult, and to widen the scope of states who participated in the network. NATO’s great advantage for its members was not only that it was a guarantee of security in the event of war, but that it also, by the fact of its highly evolved structure, guaranteed predictability of strategic–political behaviour. By the time Spain came to join NATO, this institutionalisation was advanced and sophisticated. Neither the strategic nor political necessity of Spanish membership was questioned among Alliance members, and the reasons for this are clear. If Spain was to join the West European political–economic system and become an active participant in that system, its strategic vocation needed to be not only secured but also institutionalised.64 This could have been done via the Madrid Pacts, but three factors mitigated against such a course. In the first place, the Pacts were temporary in nature, and therefore constantly under review and subject to immediate domestic and international pressure. Second, the


Pacts were bilateral: they afforded no chance for extensive integration of Spain with its North Atlantic partners, and thereby no influence of NATO members over the direction of Spanish security policy. Third, this was no longer how things were done in the West European system. With the institution clearly implanted as the vehicle of international politics in this region, and with NATO as the most important security institution, joining the system meant signing up to its institutions. For Spain this was a fact of life; for NATO it was a necessity if its West–West role was to be consolidated. This picture of the Alliance is reinforced if we examine the accession from a Spanish perspective. Although West European states publicly separated Spanish membership of the EEC from NATO membership, it seems that this was largely a holding measure in order to prevent the assumption that early membership of one would necessarily mean early membership of the other. It was clearly difficult or impossible for the two to be separated in a medium- to long-term perspective. For Spain, the options were three-fold: to pursue the Madrid Pacts, to join the Alliance and thus pursue the same strategic vocation via a multilateral framework, or to opt for neutralism. As we have seen, the final solution was a blend of the first two of these. Neutrality, however, was never a serious option. For Spain to decouple from the North Atlantic strategic system, whilst simultaneously attempting to join the political– economic bloc that that strategic system was designed to uphold would have been an impossible task. To join one meant some form of membership of the other. Thus the external forces in favour of accession were the inseparability of West European institutions, and the de facto Spanish membership of the military wing of that system. There were also clear internal factors at work. However questionable the argument about NATO and Spanish democratisation, it seems clear that involving the Spanish army in the Alliance network would have produced clear effects on the orientation of the service, and we have seen that the army was an effectively isolated threat to Spanish democracy. Thus, while NATO’s ability to permeate all levels of society is at best limited, its ability to permeate doctrine and role perception is far more profound. The internal debate Perhaps the sharpest contrast between this case of enlargement and its predecessors is the absence of protracted debate, serious disagreement or individual sponsorship of the Spanish accession. The other cases were all lengthy and sometimes acrimonious and tended to involve spon-


sorship of the prospective invitee by a NATO member (usually the US). In this case, it is very clear that no such characteristics pertained. With consensus on accession largely a formality, it then became a question of whether, and how far, Spain would wish to become integrated into the Alliance. Therefore it is fair to say that the initiative lay with Spain, both in the actual accession and the subsequent postreferendum negotiations. Little or nothing in the above analysis indicates that this accession was characterised by the need for some allies to be persuaded. Why should this have been? The overwhelming factor in this is surely the fact that this was a democracy which was already a de facto member, and which eventually expressed its desire to become a full member. Its strategic qualifications were never questioned; its political–ideological ones were clearly the only real bone of contention. However, it is also true that Spain’s exclusion from the Alliance was not really a difficult question once the Madrid Pacts had secured its strategic vocation, especially as the Franco regime was so virulently antiSoviet. Hence NATO never had to confront the question of ‘what happens if we say no’, unlike in the cases of Turkey and Germany. Nonetheless, if strategic qualifications were the only criteria, then Spanish admission under Franco should not have been a problem. The taxonomy of membership How, then, do the above factors affect the idea of membership criteria? As with all NATO’s accessions, the debate shows the blend of geographical, strategic and political articulations of what constituted a North Atlantic state. However, the changed external setting of the Alliance produced qualitative changes in the relative taxonomic importance of these criteria. The basic underlying stability of the Cold War system, and the scarcity of strategic ambiguities among the European states, developed a strategic status quo that was essentially satisfactory to both sides. NATO had no obvious geostrategic holes in its defence network, and the Cold War had become a question of how to manage bipolarity and its attendant tensions. Thus enlargement as a strategic move in the international chess game had decreased in importance. It was a question of how Spain’s strategic adherence was to be institutionalised, since this adherence was (a) unquestioned during the Francoist era; and (b) almost certain in the post-Franco period, since Spain itself generally recognised the inescapability of its obligations if it wished to rejoin West Europe. Thus the agenda for accession was not principally one of strategic equations. Rather, it was concerned with the cohesion and legitimisa-


tion of the Alliance vis-à-vis its own members. The Cold War had always created an enhanced need for cohesion, but its intensification during the late 1970s and early 1980s meant this had a greater premium. What is striking is that the advantage of Spain in this regard was clearly closely related to its status as a democratising state. In this sense, Spain was an asset to the Alliance because it was a democracy, not simply because it presented NATO with a new member. In conclusion, therefore, this case of NATO enlargement is a clear demonstration of the kind of priorities that drove the German accession 28 years earlier. Like the Federal Republic, Spain was a postFascist democracy looking to break with past relations and recast itself as a modern West European state, and to subscribe to a political– economic system. However, the accession also demonstrates how embedded NATO had become as an institution for security cooperation among its members. The Federal Republic joined an emerging bloc whose political and economic development would have been critically impaired without it. Spain joined the most institutionalised region in the world, and found itself compelled to enter more fully into this system than it might otherwise have wished. For the Alliance, the accession was an opportunity to consolidate its place in the West European system, and to widen and deepen the norms and practices that gave it that place.

Conclusions We have examined NATO’s enlargement during the Cold War with three factors as our terms of reference: the impact of external factors, the nature of intra-Alliance debate and the taxonomy of membership in NATO. It can be seen that the picture is a complex one; generalisations about the Alliance are not easy to formulate. Nonetheless, some clear themes have emerged from our case studies. These all stem from one common underlying theme: NATO enlargement during the Cold War was not solely about the Cold War. The Alliance established a role and purpose that went beyond the agendas of the East–West confrontation. This theme, and the insights that arise from it, is examined below in the framework that has been applied throughout this study.

External factors In the Introduction, we set out four subissues within this theme: (a) the impact of direct military threat; (b) the extent to which the geostrategic confrontation with the Soviet Union created the enlargement agenda; (c) the relationship of the new member to the post-war political project in the West; and (d) the harmony between Alliance reasons for expansion and those of the new member. The Cold War overlay was the main constant in the external context of the Alliance. It was a permanent presence, creating its own agendas and exerting pressure on others. This acted as a centripetal force upon NATO, pushing members together and creating strong incentives for compromise and agreement. The critical distinction to be made is between those agendas created by the Cold War, and those that were only influenced or pressured by it. This is the most important distinction that a study of Alliance expansion illustrates. It is clear from the analysis that the purpose of NATO, at the most elemental level, was the restoration of what Ireland terms ‘an indigenous balance of power’ in Western Europe. This purpose has implications for our entire understanding of NATO enlargement, as is shown below, and it is vital to grasp it at the outset. While the military capacity of the Soviet Union was always a potential threat to the indigenous balance, it is clear from our analysis that this was only the deciding factor in the accession of 162

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Turkey. With the other accessions it was always important, but was not the sole agenda. The effect of the Cold War, and thereby the Soviet threat, was far more directly felt in the political aspect of the confrontation. NATO was not so much an organisation of military materiél as an expression of common ideas about order. These ideas used power and balance as the basic currencies of European security, with the maintenance of an acceptable status quo as the basic goal. We saw at the outset that the classical system was not ended by the Cold War; in fact its collapse predates bipolarity and thereby allowed the Cold War to take place. The prime post-war concern remained the reconstitution of the European security system, and would have been so regardless of the East–West relationship. The Cold War was therefore more of a symptom than a cause of the collapse of the European state system. The basic characteristics of this system – power, balance and the maintenance of an acceptable status quo – had not fundamentally changed. What had changed were the parameters of the system: an indigenous balance could no longer be achieved within indigenous borders. This can clearly be seen in the creation of NATO, and the accession of Germany. For the members of the Brussels Pact, the aim of the Alliance was to involve the US in the European balance of power. Once it was agreed that Germany was to be revived rather than deindustrialised or broken up, a US presence became the only way to rebalance the classical system in keeping with the old logic. An alternative was the political and economic integration of Western Europe, but this was still only a future goal in 1948. We saw in Chapter 4 that NATO accession aimed not only to institutionalise Germany, but also to subordinate it to the US overlay. In the initial period, the forthcoming balance of power was the immediate concern, and thus the European system had undergone a change of its parameters but not of its basic rules. To put it simply, West Europe sought balance not only against the Soviet Union, but also against itself. The role of the Cold War lay in its pressure-cooker atmosphere, which forced the underlying problems of European security to the surface. Europe’s structural troubles were rooted in the inability of the classical system to incorporate Germany, but the Cold War provided a new source of instability. In doing this, however, it also forced a solution – the US guarantee – to the problem of West European order that would have been harder to attain in different circumstances. It is difficult to envisage a US commitment to Europe such as that embodied by the Alliance being achieved without the Cold War. Like the division of

164 Conclusions

Germany, the Alliance represented the optimum available solution under the existing state of affairs. A more direct impact of the Cold War upon NATO was in its stimulus for the Atlantic Pact to be given practical meaning. The consequences of this can be seen in the informal accessions of the ‘stepping-stone’ states (without whom a transatlantic guarantee in the pre-missile age would have been difficult to implement) but also in the formal accessions of Turkey and Germany. In both cases, an important driving force behind the accession was the military implementation of NATO’s strategy. In the Turkish case, the Cold War was fundamentally the instigatory factor in Turkish accession. In the German case it was more a permanent presence, compelling a resolution of the issue. The accession of Germany brought the factor of order into sharp focus. Once again, it was the pervasive atmosphere of the Cold War that helped to force the issue to the surface, but the issue itself had been an intractable one for many years. Once Germany had acceded, NATO’s role in the intra-West balance was institutionalised and perpetuated. The deeper dynamic underlying the Cold War overlay provides a fuller picture of the attractiveness of NATO for other states, as well as demonstrating the interplay between the immediate and intrinsic security problems after 1945. For example, Denmark, Norway, Portugal and Italy had all come to the conclusion that aloofness from the European security system was not a realistic option. This was a recognition of their inseparability from systemic dynamics, which was exacerbated by the Cold War. The effect of bipolarity was to force a decision about where to place their future, and to which bloc they really belonged. The Cold War did not allow for ambiguities or grey areas, and thereby tended to draw much firmer lines between blocs. This was institutionalised in the North Atlantic Treaty, which did not permit limited membership and thus did not recognise shaded allegiances. As Kennan noted in 1948, this raised for every state in Western Europe the question of whether or not to belong, and therefore curtailed choices. However, these choices were not uniform, which highlights the limitations of structural explanations of NATO membership. Denmark and Norway made different choices to Sweden, choices driven almost entirely as a result of disastrous and basically fruitless neutralist policies in the past. Sweden’s successful pursuit of security through neutralism was diametrically opposed to the experience of Norway and Denmark. The latter two had strong doubts about bloc politics, but were driven into participation by a sense that they could not voluntarily stay out of

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them. Structural explanations similarly fail to satisfactorily explain why Portugal could be accepted by the Alliance whilst Spain could not (this point is returned to later). To summarise so far, the effects of the Cold War lay less in its own agendas than in its profound influence on existing ones. The looming military presence of the Soviet Union was a permanent influence, and was instrumental in NATO’s military institutionalisation, but it is hard to find a case in which the Alliance took on a new member solely to address the direct military problem. The Cold War’s role was more directly shown in terms of geostrategic influences. It made the inclusion of the ‘stepping-stone’ states a vital founding component of the North Atlantic Treaty, and was a clear incentive for the Alliance to agree to Greek–Turkish accession. It is these accessions that can most clearly be related to the geostrategic relationship with the Soviet Union. However, the other path to systemic stability – the integrationist path – was also underway, and its influence plainly showed by the time that Spain joined the Alliance. In terms of the Cold War, this accession was concerned with securing Spain’s extant role in the North Atlantic military system, but the key context was the changing relationship between Spain and Western Europe, rather than the permanent relationship between Western Europe and the Soviet bloc. In this way the accession of Spain demonstrated how closely linked NATO had become with the West European project. In many ways this was to be expected: the Alliance was linked from its inception with the maintenance of European order, and only the modalities of that order had changed. We saw that the concept of a ‘Western vocation’ was always central to the expansion of the Alliance, and this vocation possessed ideological as well as strategic–military dimensions. Italy, Turkey, Germany and Spain all joined NATO with aspirations that went well beyond the US guarantee, and embodied an intensely political idea of the West and of Europe. NATO had a paradoxical role here. It can be seen as the ‘enabler’ of the West European project in that it provided the necessary political and military security for the project to be implemented, and also resolved a long-standing structural problem by integrating West Germany. Conversely, however, it may be that NATO institutionalised and thereby perpetuated a relationship that was required in 1948 but may no longer be necessary. The problem is that the Alliance does not really allow for any political decoupling of the US from Europe (aside from force reductions). Therefore the political relationship is set in

166 Conclusions

stone, and serious debate about whether it is still required is curtailed. A further problem is that, as the EDC failure showed, it was also an alternative to the West European project. We now come to the harmony between Alliance expansion and new members’ reasoning. What is striking here is the extent to which NATO became associated with the multilayered idea of ‘the West’. This is particularly true in the case of Turkey, which is also the clearest case of disharmony between the purposes of the Alliance in accession and those of the prospective member. Nonetheless, it is clear that NATO has always been an ‘alliance of choice’, in Paul Cornish’s words: a new member has to wish to join. As a consequence, enlargement has not always been at a time or place of NATO’s choosing, and it is also hard to find instances of members being ‘cherry-picked’ by the Alliance. The only clear-cut case of the latter is the states admitted at the end of the Washington Talks, and possibly the German accession. These aside, NATO did not actually approach a prospective member. A superficial explanation for this would be the scarcity of unaligned states in Cold War Europe, but there was a deeper reason, again related to NATO’s intra-West function. The Alliance was, for its members at least, an inherently defensive pact with an important intra-West role to play. Thus it was concerned with maintaining the stability of the West European status quo: it was an essentially conservative institution. Because of this, there was no real need to seek out new allies: provided that the status quo was functioning and unthreatened, the Alliance had little incentive to search for members and could wait for allies to present themselves. Thus Germany and Spain, the only two states viewed as probable future members, were to accede ‘when the time is right’. We can, in fact, view the original North Atlantic Treaty signatories plus Germany as a part of the same process: these were the members required to address the basic problems of European security. With the ‘stepping-stone’ states included, the transatlantic guarantee thereby implemented and the structural problem of Germany resolved, the requirements for NATO to accomplish its tasks were in place. It remained only to maintain the solution that NATO embodied. This helps to explain why the exclusion of Franco’s Spain could be maintained. Spain’s role was important but not intrinsic: without Spanish adherence to the Western military complex system, the system would be less secure but not unworkable. A system that did not include the ‘stepping-stone’ states, or was confronted with a hostile Germany, would be failing in its basic functions.

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The intra-West function of the Alliance that has been outlined here does raise the ‘internalist’ argument about NATO’s internallydriven role, but it does not in itself suggest that the internalists are correct to describe NATO as a device for US domination. In order to assess the role of the US, and the Alliance response to changing circumstances, we need to summarise the implications of how NATO has debated enlargement.

The intra-Alliance debate Three subissues were identified at the beginning of this study: the sources of the enlargement debate within the Alliance; the extent and focus of disconsensus; and the role of the US in the eventual decision. Before we examine the role of the US in NATO enlargement decisions, it will be useful to firstly summarise the institutional nature of NATO decision-making. This is because there is one outstanding feature of intra-Alliance debates: the use of subministerial bureaucratic machinery to construct consensus. Each case of formal enlargement involved the use of the Council of Deputies and, later, the Permanent Representatives at the North Atlantic Council as a key forum for the issue to be discussed and inter-government agreement achieved. NATO is heavily institutionalised, but has no supranational powers of its own. Therefore the final decisions are in the hands of the member states, and so it was important to establish a consensus before the very public meeting of the Ministerial North Atlantic Council (NAC) made the eventual decision. For this reason, the final NAC decision can be seen as, if more than a rubber stamp, then certainly little more than a ratifying device on occasions. The roots of this can be seen in the North Atlantic Treaty negotiations in 1948–9, when the Working Group was set up to engage in issues set by the full diplomatic meetings. As a non-ministerial forum, there was more latitude for expression and for inter-governmental interaction. The high-level meetings were able to benefit from the permanent interaction that was in session underneath their level. The subministerial level had an immediacy and flexibility that was followed through in the Council of Deputies and the Permanent Representatives. This technique, ‘the NATO method’, served a useful purpose as a forum by which governments could interact in a permanent non-public setting. As such it was a prime venue for exchange of views and establishing of consensus. The accessions of Greece and Turkey and the Federal Republic of Germany also demonstrate, however, that power hierarchies were in

168 Conclusions

existence within the Alliance: NATO cannot realistically be described as an alliance of equals. These accessions clearly show the extensive use of the Standing Group, plus bilateral and trilateral discussions, as forums for discussions between the three principal powers in NATO – the US, Britain and France. In some respects this had obvious reasons: it was natural that the three main military powers would form a standing group to coordinate strategy, and they were also the Occupying Powers in Germany. However, we can also view this trio as the ‘Big Three’ in the Alliance, and agreement between them was of decisive importance in the positions of the other allies. Consultations between them were always conducted alongside the wider Alliance discussions in the Council of Deputies and the NAC; NATO enlargement decisions were not approached solely through the latter, and the roots of the decisions are usually to be found in agreement between these three powers. Thus the institutional channels of enlargement were, externally, the bilateral and trilateral links, and internally the Standing Group and the NATO subministerial councils. NATO’s decisions are therefore made through a number of different channels, all of which lead up to the final vote at the Ministerial NAC. It is very clear that, as much as possible, NATO members attempted to reach consensus before this final decision. This is almost certainly owing to the nature of enlargement decisions (a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and the fact that NATO decisions are still between governments rather than made on a supranational basis. There is a premium on making the public forum of the NAC as controversy-free as possible. Of the cases covered in this study, only those of the ‘stepping-stone’ states (Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Portugal) in 1948, and Spain in 1982, can realistically be described as non-controversial. We saw that in the other cases – Italy, Greece, Turkey, Germany and in fact Francoist Spain – there was considerable disagreement about the principle and/or the modalities of accession. Controversy and disconsensus focused around the accession as both a political and a military act. For example, including Italy was principally a political rather than a military act, since it was generally agreed that Italy’s military contribution was likely to be small. Conversely, Greece and Turkey were admitted in the face of strong political opposition and a peripheral military case. In the German accession, the political necessity of enveloping Germany into the Western institutional web was at least as important as the potential German military contribution. And in the case of Franco’s Spain, the political act was deemed wholly unacceptable despite strong strategic advantages. Two conclusions can be drawn from this. The first, which

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is demonstrated in the Italian and Turkish cases, is the tension between the priorities of the Cold War and those of the indigenous balance of power in Europe. The latter was closely related to the post-war West European project, and had its own developing ideological criteria for membership. The former, with military responses to political threats as a prominent feature, had criteria that sometimes cut across those of the intra-Europe aspect of NATO. This can clearly be seen in the response to Turkish accession on the part of some members: it will be recalled that many argued that they did not conceive of the North Atlantic Treaty as an anti-Soviet alliance but as a politically Western organisation. The second conclusion is the distinction between what may be termed positive and negative military acts. Positive military accessions were those in which the accession brought tangible gains for the Alliance: the ‘stepping-stone’ states and Germany, for example. Negative military gains were those in which the accession was driven by fears over the military consequences of rejection: Italy and Turkey are the clearest examples of this. The issue of negative military gains adds another facet to the earlier points that NATO has rarely ‘cherry-picked’ its new members. In the polarising atmosphere of the Cold War, the potential consequences of rejecting an approach may be seen as more serious, and consequently it was difficult for the Alliance to publicly reject an application. But where did the initiative come from? Here, the role of the US becomes clear. In the accessions of Greece, Turkey and Germany, the US was instrumental in raising the issue and in assembling the required consensus. It is also worth noting that most of the allies looked towards the US for a lead in these matters. This was clearly the case during the creation of the Alliance in the controversy over Italian membership, and Greek–Turkish accession also shows the reluctance of many allies to openly oppose the US. Similarly, the accession of Germany was a recognised necessity that only strengthened the perceived need for the US to remain in NATO. In this sense, the US was a vital catalytic presence in the Alliance. However, in the Introduction we examined the many criticisms of the US role in NATO, and raised the question of whether the US presence in NATO can be described as either hegemonic or imperial. Hegemony, it will be recalled, implies leadership by consent; an imperial role carries stronger overtones of dominance. To assess the presence of such a role, we need to assess (a) the extent to which the US has imposed its security agendas in enlargement; and (b) whether US support for

170 Conclusions

expansion can really be described as having intra-bloc dominance as its rationale. To take the first, the analysis in this study shows only one instance in which the US might be described as imposing a security agenda that was not shared by its allies. This was the case of Greece and Turkey, but even here it is difficult to argue that its allies in the Alliance did not share the US agenda. The strategic importance of Greece and Turkey to Western Europe was not really questioned; dispute centred on whether to use NATO as the vehicle by which to secure Greek–Turkish allegiance to the West. In this sense, it is hard to see how Turkey and Greece would have been admitted to the Alliance without the active sponsorship of the US. This example aside, the other accessions do not display real evidence that the US agenda was not shared by its allies, only that the US was an instrumental element in securing allied agreement and consensus. This may of course be due to lack of a sufficient number of cases, and there is no case where the European members pressed for an accession over the wishes of the US. This would be a genuine hard test of the extent to which Washington really calls the shots in the Alliance. However, another example of a hard test would be the reverse: what happens when the US presses for an accession to which the European members are opposed? A possible instance of this would be Greece and Turkey, but a more striking example was Franco’s Spain. The US desired Spanish membership from the earliest days of the North Atlantic Treaty, but refrained from formally raising the subject in a NATO context. What is more, this was driven almost entirely by an awareness of the depth of allied opposition. To be sure, there was no threat of neutralism if Spain was not admitted, in contrast to the Turkish case. Nonetheless, the US was clearly loath to raise the subject at a NATO meeting, even when (as in the late 1950s) there seemed to be a ‘critical mass’ of political support from Britain and France. This is returned to in the following section. Here, we can state that the role of the US in NATO enlargement was catalytic and hegemonic, but rarely, if ever, imperial. It can also be seen from the analysis that the intra-Alliance context has also had some bearing upon enlargement decisions. For example, Greece and Turkey were both admitted during an intense and sometimes bitter dispute over force commitments and German accession, and were clearly aided in their accession by the fact that other transatlantic divisions were more pressing. Moreover, the implementation of the forward strategy raised some important questions about allegiances on the periphery that had not been fully apparent during the WET nego-

Conclusions 171

tiations. Similarly, German accession was hastened by the need to implement the forward strategy, and Spanish accession offered an important short-term fillip for a (once again) divided Alliance. This, however, should not be carried too far – only in the German case can it be said that the intra-Alliance context actually drove the accession. In the others it was basically an assisting factor. Nonetheless, it can be said that the intra-Alliance context does have some bearing on enlargement.

The taxonomy of membership The picture of who counts as ‘one of us’ in the Alliance is not a straightforward one. The case studies show that generalisations about criteria are problematic: NATO is a geographically Atlantic alliance that extended to Italy, Greece and Turkey, a politically liberal alliance that took in Salazar’s Portugal and a strategic alliance in which the admission of Franco’s Spain – a crucial strategic point – was not even a topic of discussion. All accessions do demonstrate the three criteria, but in differing mixes. The criteria mingled together, and this was to be expected, for two reasons. First, the nature of the security problems that NATO addressed cannot easily be fitted into a single category. A few specific occasions aside, we saw that the Soviet threat was always defined primarily in political terms, and as such it permeated all areas of international life in Western Europe. Consequently, the response drew on different linkages and commonalties among NATO members: NATO was increasingly embedded in a web of institutionalised linkages. Second, NATO was a regional organisation with systemic responsibilities. This was because the perceived threat was a systemic one, in that international life in West Europe could not properly function unless it was secure. Thus, in the polarised atmosphere of the Cold War, ‘gaps’ (geographical, strategic, or political) in the Alliance were a potential cause for concern. This led to the flattening of membership into the ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept that did not recognise differing forms of bond between members. Therefore NATO, by its nature and its raison d’être, embraced members whose commonalities were neither uniform nor equal, in an alliance whose institutional bonds were both. If the mix of criteria shifts from case to case, we ought to ascertain the extent to which NATO’s external setting influenced this mix. Earlier in these conclusions, we noted that, once NATO had achieved the ‘critical mass’ of membership required to re-establish the indigenous balance of power in Europe, then its basic tasks could be pursued. This leaves

172 Conclusions

the accessions of Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain to relate to shifting external settings. It should be noted, first of all, that in all of these cases the key to the accession was an appeal for admission by the prospective member, and thus it is quite possible that they would otherwise not have been approached by the Alliance. Thus the issue for our purposes is the extent to which the external setting affected Alliance acceptance of the request for membership and their criteria for recognising a member. The only clear case in which the external setting decisively shifted membership criteria in favour of the accession was that of Greece and Turkey. Here, a change in perceptions of threat and response (particularly in the US) produced a marked change in membership priorities, which was of vital importance in the accession. This is the only real case in which NATO’s immediate task – the waging of Cold War with the Soviet Union – took active precedence over its intrinsic task of maintaining indigenous balance. The accession of Italy and the nonaccession of Franco’s Spain are examples of the reverse – the prevalence of intrinsic tasks over immediate ones – as well as the close relationship between the intrinsic task and the post-war project in West Europe. Fundamentally, then, NATO expansion was about extending the parameters of the ‘North Atlantic’, in its different articulations. The strategic articulation was related both to the Cold War – exemplified in the accession of Greece and Turkey – but also to the implementation of the US guarantee. The latter was not only required by the Cold War, but by the break-up of the European system. After 1955, there was no real need to extend the strategic parameters and no real opportunity to do so. NATO’s strategic concerns were far more concerned with its sense of conventional inferiority to the Warsaw Pact. Extending the political parameters was a different matter, one that was increasingly ideological in nature. This is the idea of the North Atlantic as a community of like-minded states, and the Cold War was in significant part a contest between two competing political–economic philosophies. Later on, the European order took on an increasingly ideological character as the integrationist project developed. In this context ideological criteria became more important. The parameters of this political articulation were set by the Cold War, but the idea itself would not necessarily end along with the Cold War. Similarly, the strategic articulation would be modified in scope and perhaps downgraded in importance, but would not of necessity evaporate. Thus, when an opportunity to expand presented itself, NATO was able to examine its prospective member through more than one lens, even if the accession was not one of its own choosing. It is very clear that

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‘one of us’ in the Alliance denoted more than simply opposing the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

NATO in the Cold War and beyond In summary, NATO membership, like much about the Alliance, defies simple generalisations. However, three categories – geography, strategy and politics – and two tasks – waging Cold War and maintaining indigenous order – stand out as crucial. We can now return to the issue raised at the very outset of this study: what was the relationship between NATO and the Cold War? The relationship between the Alliance and the Cold War was a complex one, but it is clear that the membership of the Alliance was not driven simply by the bipolar confrontation. NATO addressed a systemic security problem that predated the Cold War but was decisively affected by it. The Cold War produced NATO, but in doing so it also produced a solution to West Europe’s long-term structural troubles. This itself produced a duality in the Alliance that, for most of the Cold War, was not a serious problem but a source of underlying strength. NATO institutionalised a resolution of the impasse of classical European security, and in doing so became intimately associated with the other pathway out of the morass – the integrationist project. This helps to explain why détente and the loosening of bipolarity in the 1970s produced divergence and discord within the Alliance, but not its collapse. This link, perhaps duality, between the reconstitution of the classical system and the integrationist project also helps to explain why the tension between Atlanticist and Europeanist solutions in the 1970s similarly failed to end the Alliance. The Cold War was always a centripetal force, driving members together, and the waging of the conflict, as NATO’s immediate task, was always to the fore. However, the Cold War was able to take place because of the collapse of the classical European security system, and NATO had a clear role in the reconstitution of this system. Once the NATO system was in place, it served the immediate and intrinsic requirements of European security very well. NATO’s underlying strength is here: for 40 years it guaranteed West Europe not only against the Soviet Union but also against its own structural instabilities. Waging Cold War, being an immediate requirement, tended to mask the deeper functions that the Alliance performed, but because it was immediate it also forced the West European states to resolve those structural problems in the interest of immediate security. The immediate and intrinsic tasks were performed in tandem. Because

174 Conclusions

the Cold War set immutable East–West boundaries, the strategic and political articulations of the ‘North Atlantic’ were largely similar; certainly any differences were not recognised in the Treaty. Thus there was little distinction to be made between the tasks, except when a case such as Franco’s Spain arose. The end of the Cold War put an end to this synchronisation of tasks. A striking contrast between NATO and the EU is how little supranational authority the Alliance developed during its history. It remains an organisation of states, and is far behind the EU in terms of supranational institutional development. This is related to NATO’s intrinsic task of maintaining the European balance of power. Power relations do change, but NATO freezes a particular constellation of power with regard to Germany. The founding of the Alliance in 1948–9 utilised the old tools of the classical system – power and balance – in a reconstituted system. When Germany joined in 1955, it was subordinated not to supranationalism but to power and the overlay of the US. One critical argument against the EDC had been that Germany would eventually dominate it. The NATO solution was adopted in preference, and became set as the method by which the ‘German Question’ in Europe would be resolved. Therefore, NATO froze the classical method of stabilising European security, and in doing so made it more difficult to pursue other methods. The Alliance, by providing its own kind of solution, obviates the difficult search for an alternative. This function of the Alliance did not evaporate with the end of the Cold War. In fact, 1989 raised the whole problem of 1945 once again: how could the European security system be reconstituted to ensure long-term stability? NATO’s place in this has been two-fold. First, the intrinsic task remained in place, and was actually reinforced by the reunification of Germany. Secondly, this study has shown NATO’s close relationship to the post-war idea of Europe, in both its power-based and its ideological forms. International order in Europe took on increasingly ideological tones as integration deepened. There is a dichotomy here, in that integration deepened in the EU but not in the Alliance: it may be that the more classical power hierarchies of NATO (particularly the overlay of the ‘German Question’) actually facilitated the supranational features of the EU. Whether or not this is the case, NATO clearly possessed an ideological element of its own, whose increasing strength was demonstrated in the accession of Spain. If NATO is to be a beneficial force in Europe after the Cold War, then it has to recast not just its immediate task, but also the means by which it pursues the intrinsic task of managing and consolidating European

Conclusions 175

order. This is because its power-based intrinsic task is almost inevitably threatening to its former enemy. Therefore, in order for its intrinsic function to be maintained, the Alliance needs to somehow recast its pan-European function. ‘Europe’ as a political idea is no longer confined to NATO’s membership area but extends well beyond it. The task for the Alliance is to help extend those political parameters without losing sight of its basic functions. At the heart of this post-Cold War readjustment, therefore, is the recasting of the intrinsic and immediate tasks. These two fused together over a 40-year period, mostly because they were coterminous and closely related, and to prise them apart after such a long period is no easy task. The immediate task was about much more than force commitments: it impacted upon NATO’s institutional structure, its ethos and its prevalent norms. The NATO deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo are evidence of the recasting of immediate military tasks. The Alliance has clearly downplayed its role of territorial defence, and attempted, via initiatives such as the Combined Joint Task Forces concept, to assume a new role as a kind of pan-European trouble-shooter. This, however, raises the more fundamental concern of on whose behalf the Alliance is assuming this new immediate task. The fusing of tasks during the Cold War provided a simple answer, but post-Cold War Europe has far less clearly-drawn boundaries. Consequently, NATO’s international mandate has diffused: Alliance military deployments since 1989 have always been mandated through other international institutions such as the UN. The task for the Alliance is to broaden its scope in order to act for Europe as a whole, rather than the Western Europe of the Cold War. To do this however, means recasting its intrinsic task. The intrinsic task was implemented through the classical European ‘tools of the trade’: power and balance. These mechanisms could be put into place with immediate effect, unlike integrationist mechanisms, and this was a large part of their appeal. For example, the appeal of the NATO solution to the ‘German Question’ was that the Alliance would help to resolve the question quickly without the need to develop longterm integration. However, during the Cold War the intra-West mechanisms of the Alliance were increasingly at odds with those of the political project in Western Europe. This caused problems, as we saw in Chapter 4, but never invalidated the rationale for the Alliance itself. The problem now lies in the way NATO freezes the preferences and tools of 1948 and thereby curtails alternatives. It is, in this sense, a basically divisive organisation, which inherently represents a pole in Europe even when

176 Conclusions

its opposing pole has been disbanded. Initiatives such as the Partnership for Peace and the NATO–Russia Charter may be the way forward, since they allow for differing degrees of membership; the limited membership idea, dropped in 1948, may actually have its merits half a century on. NATO currently does possess its ‘hard core’ of full members, which will shortly be expanded by three: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Moreover, this hard core has an impressive waiting list of prospective members, with Romania and Slovenia current favourites to be in the next tranche. These prospective members have all defined NATO membership not only in terms of a security guarantee, but also in terms of a Western vocation.1 This is a very strong echo of Cold War expansions, and demonstrates the appeal of the Alliance as part of the idea of the West. Outside this core of full members and prospective members is a more diffuse orbit of states that seem unlikely to wish for full membership: Austria and Sweden, for example. Finally, Ukraine and Russia have an institutionalised ‘special relationship’ with the Alliance, which gives them a slightly more privileged voice than that of the previous group. For all its faults, the Alliance clearly exerts a powerful attraction in European security, but for this very reason George Kennan’s old warning is as prescient now as it ever was: the real problem for NATO enlargement lies not in inclusion, but exclusion. In final conclusion therefore, the findings of this study can be summarised as follows. First, NATO enlargement during the Cold War addressed concerns that went beyond the East–West confrontation. Intrinsically the Alliance reconstituted the European order after the long break-up of the old system. It did this in a way that had immediate effect, and consequently had a head start on the integrationist path. Second, the Alliance works by consent under the accepted hegemony of the US. Power hierarchies do exist – they are part of NATO’s solution to Europe’s structural troubles – but are diffused through institutional procedures and democratic norms. Third, the fusing of intrinsic and immediate tasks produced a mixed membership, blending political and strategic criteria. To join NATO during the Cold War meant more than acquiring a nuclearised security guarantee. It entailed signing up, first, to the idea of the West: the deepening web of political, economic and ideological linkages that grew up in the pressurising atmosphere of the Cold War. Second, it entailed subscribing to an indigenous balance of power within this web: a system that was reconstituted in the Alliance by expanding its parameters rather than its mechanisms. This has been

Conclusions 177

NATO’s great strength, but in the post-Cold War era it is its most pressing problem. As in the past, it is still an alliance of choice, but the responsibility of the Alliance itself to choose wisely is more important than it has ever been.

Notes Introduction 1. For the case against expansion, see Michael MccGwire, ‘NATO Expansion: A Policy Error of Historic Importance’, Review of International Studies, 24(2), pp. 23–42; Michael Brown ‘The Flawed Logic of NATO Expansion’, Survival, 37(1); John Lewis Gaddis, ‘History, Grand Strategy and NATO Enlargement’, Survival, 40(1), pp. 145–51. The case in favour can be found in Christopher L. Ball, ‘Nattering NATO Negativism? Reasons Why Expansion May Be a Good Thing’, Review of International Studies, 24(2), pp. 43–67; Ronald D. Asmus, Richard L. Kugler and F. Stephen Larrabee, ‘Building a New NATO’, Foreign Affairs, 72(3). See also NATO’s publication, Study on NATO Enlargement. 2. See ‘Why NATO Should Grow’, New York Review of Books, August 10, 1995. 3. MccGwire, p. 25. 4. Steve Weber, ‘Does NATO Have a Future?’, in Beverly Crawford (ed.), The Future of European Security (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Charles Glaser, ‘Why NATO is Still Best: Future Security Arrangements in Europe’, International Security, 18(1), pp. 5–50; Hugh de Santis, ‘The Graying of NATO’, Washington Quarterly, 14(4), pp. 51–65; Barry Buzan, ‘New Patterns of Global Security’, International Affairs, 67(3). In fact, pessimism about NATO’s future is by no means a post-Cold War phenomenon. Paul Cornish notes pithily that the Alliance has inspired ‘a whole cottage industry of jeremiahs’ during its long history. See Partnership in Crisis: The US, Europe and the Fall and Rise of NATO (London: RIIA, 1997), p. 2. 5. See Daniel N. Nelson and Thomas S. Szayna, NATO’s Metamorphosis and Central European Politics: Effects of Alliance Transformation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1997), p. 6. 6. For definitions of alliances, see Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond, When Trust Breaks Down: Alliance Norms and World Politics (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), p. 52. Their definition draws heavily on one developed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and J. David Singer. Also Robert Endicott Osgood, Alliances and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 19. 7. Barry Buzan et al., The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for the PostCold War Era (London: Pinter, 1990). 8. Paul Cornish, The US, Europe and the Fall and Rise of NATO (London: RIIA, 1997). 9. Beatrice Heuser, Western Containment Policies in the Cold War: The Yugoslav Case 1948–53 (London: Routledge, 1989), p. xiv. 10. Beatrice Heuser, Transatlantic Relations: Sharing Ideals and Costs (London: RIIS, 1996), p. 26. 11. For the classic encapsulation of this concept, see Karl Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the 178

Notes 179 Light of Historical Experience (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). Note the title refers only to the North Atlantic Area, as opposed to Treaty Organisation.

1 The North Atlantic Treaty in context 1. John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO 1942–9 (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 8–9, 17. 2. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 87. 3. Ian Clark, The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 13. My own view on the nature of the European security system is in Mark Smith, ‘NATO Enlargement and European Security’, in Adrian Hyde-Price and Lisbeth Aggestam (eds), Security and Identity in Europe: Exploring the New Agenda (London: Macmillan, 2000). 4. Anton DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd edn (London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 1–4. 5. DePorte, p. 3. 6. Clark, p. 146; Robert Endicott Osgood, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 10–11. 7. See DePorte, p. 6. 8. Clark, p. 134. 9. DePorte, p. 3. 10. Clark, p. 146. 11. See Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: European–American Relations Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1980). 12. The phrase ‘the curse of bipolarity’ is George Kennan’s, cited in Osgood, NATO. 13. The concept of ‘overlay’ is discussed in Barry Buzan et al., The European Security Order Recant: Scenarios for the Post-Cold War Era (London: Pinter, 1990), pp. 15–16. On the relationship between the break-up of European order and the Cold War, see pp. 32–40; also DePorte, pp. 58–91; Clark, pp. 168–76. 14. Buzan et al., p. 16. 15. William Wallace, The Transformation of Western Europe (London: Pinter 1990), p. 35 16. DePorte, p. 3. 17. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941–7 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). 18. See Clark, p. 110; Karl D. Bracher, The Age of Ideologies: A History of Political Thought in the Twentieth Century (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 189. 19. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War 1945–92, 7th edn (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993), p. 13. 20. DePorte argues that ‘nothing is as effective in orienting a country as an occupying army’, and that as a consequence the political allegiances of European states after 1945 tended to follow those of their occupying power. See DePorte, p. 59. 21. The West European states had been sufficiently concerned about the emergence of a Marxist–Leninist Soviet to intervene directly in the aftermath of

180 Notes

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

the First World War, and the presence of Bolshevism remained a key security fear among Western states throughout the interwar years. See D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins 1917–1960, 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 15–28, 38–9. Ibid. p. 61. See Michael W. Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 152. See Cable 14 March 1946, FO 371/56763; John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO 1942–49 (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 41–2. George Kennan (‘X’), ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, 25(4), p. 574. Osgood, pp. 30, 34. Baylis, p. 127. Dan Reiter makes a useful distinction between direct and systemic threats. Direct threats occur when ‘the threatening state is making a specific demand of a state with the implicit or explicit promise of military action if the demand is not met’; a systemic threat pertains in ‘a situation in which a local power appears to be posing a general threat to the nations of the region, such that it seems to have broad ambitions for greater political power and/or territory’. Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances and World Wars (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 49–50. On the relationships between alliances and threats, see Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (New York: Cornell University Press, 1987). Timothy Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (London: Aldwych Press, 1981), p. 221; see also John R. Gillingham, ‘Introduction’, in John R. Gillingham and Francis Heller (eds), NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 1. Saki Dockrill, Britain’s Policy for West German Rearmament 1950–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 3; see also Lawrence Kaplan, ‘The Cold War and European Revisionism’, Diplomatic History, 11(2), pp. 147–56. See, for example, Alan K. Henrikson, ‘The Creation of the North Atlantic Alliance 1948–1952’, Naval War College Review, 32(3), p. 7; Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, ‘The Pentagon Negotiations, March 1948: The Launching of the North Atlantic Treaty’, International Affairs, 59(3), p. 352. Henrikson, ibid. For an examination of how the British view of the Soviet Union developed during this period, see Baylis, pp. 37–8. Baylis, p. 65; Sir Nicholas Henderson, The Birth of NATO (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), p. 1. See Baylis, pp. 64–6; Henderson, pp. 3–4. See, for example, Klaus Schwabe, ‘The Origins of the United States’ Engagement in Europe 1946–1952’, in Gillingham and Heller (eds), NATO, pp. 170–4; Ireland, pp. 57–8; Baylis, p. 65; Henderson, p. 1. The development of Bevin’s early ideas on Western Union are examined in Sean Greenwood, ‘Ernest Bevin, France and Western Union: August 1945–February 1946’, European History Quarterly, 14(3), pp. 319–38. See also John Kent and John Young, ‘The “Western Union” Concept and British

Notes 181

38.

39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

Defence Planning’, in Robert Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War 1945–1950 (London: Routledge, 1991). See John Young, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe 1945–51 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984), for the case that the Dunkirk Treaty’s roots are to be found in the period 1944–7, when security hopes rested on the Grand Alliance, and fears centred largely on Germany. For the argument that the Treaty was actually a precursor of the anti-Soviet treaties which came after it, see John Baylis, ‘Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty: The Origins of NATO’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 5, pp. 236–47; Sean Greenwood, ‘Return to Dunkirk: The Origins of the Anglo–French Dunkirk Treaty of March 1947’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 6, pp. 49–65. See Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism, pp. 71–2; Wolfgang Krieger, ‘Foundation and History of the Treaty of Brussels’, in Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster (eds), The Western Security Community: Common Problems and Conflicting National Interests During the Foundation Phase of the North Atlantic Alliance (Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 232; Jan Van Der Harst, ‘From Neutrality to Alignment: Dutch Defense Policy 1945–51’, in Gillingham and Heller, pp. 32–3. See Oral History: John D. Hickerson, HSTL. Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, ‘The Origins of Western Defense: Belgian and Dutch Perspectives 1940–1949’, in Ehnio Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 141–62; Jacques Frémeaux and André Martel, ‘French Defence Policy 1947–1949’, in Olav Riste (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years: European and Atlantic Defence 1947–1953 (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1985), pp. 92–106. Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism, p. 68. Cable 16 August 1948, FO 371/73075/Z6632. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 14. Elisabeth Barker, The British Between the Superpowers 1945–50 (London: Macmillan, 1983); Charles S. Maier, ‘Alliance and Autonomy: European Identity and US Foreign Policy Objectives in the Truman Years’, in Michael J. Lacey (ed.), The Truman Presidency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 273–98. See Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism, pp. 73–5; Wiebes and Zeeman, pp. 355–6. The best analysis of the Pentagon Talks is Wiebes and Zeeman, pp. 352–63. The text of the Pentagon Paper is in FRUS 1948 (III), p. 74. Ibid. This idea of the North Atlantic Treaty is similar to the ‘dumb-bell’ concept favoured by George Kennan. The vision of the Treaty at the Pentagon does tend to back the argument put by John Kent and John Young that the British preference at this time was for ‘a US alliance . . . in order to make a European-based system, the Brussels Treaty, effective’. The omission of Spain was in the face of ‘the strongest possible pressure’ on the part of the US military ‘to make provision for the admission of Spain here and now in any community of Western nations’, according to Inverchapel. See Wiebes and Zeeman, p. 361. See Richard Woyke, ‘Foundation and History of NATO 1948–50’, in Wiggershaus and Foerster, The Western Security Community, p. 259. Ironically, the presence of the British spy Donald McLean at the Pentagon

182 Notes Talks meant that Stalin knew more about the planned pact than France and the Benelux states put together. Wall notes French resentment at their exclusion from the talks, and the resultant feeling that France was ‘always knocking at the door of the Anglo–Saxon Club’. See Irwin Wall, ‘France and the North Atlantic Alliance’, in Gillingham and Francis Heller (eds), NATO, p. 51.

2 The membership question and neo-enlargement, 1948–9 1. George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–50 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), p. 411. 2. FRUS 1948 (III), pp. 283–9. 3. John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO 1942–49 (London: Macmillan, 1993); Ritchie Ovendale, The English-Speaking Alliance: Britain, the United States, the Dominions and the Cold War 1941–7 (London: Macmillan, 1982). 4. Sir Nicholas Henderson, The Birth of NATO (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), pp. 38–9; Massimo de Leonardis, ‘Defence or Liberation of Europe: The Strategies of the West Against a Soviet Attack 1947–50’, in Ennio Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 190–1; Bruna Bagnato, ‘France and the Origins of the Atlantic Pact’, in Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact, p. 101; Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman ‘The Origins of Western Defense’, in Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact, p. 158. 5. The phrase ‘the NATO method’ is Lord Ismay’s: NATO: The First Five Years 1949–54 (Paris: NATO, 1955). 6. Sydney R. Snyder, ‘The Role of the International Working Group in the Creation of the North Atlantic Treaty December 1947–April 1949’ (PhD thesis, Kent State University, 1992). 7. See Lawrence S. Kaplan and Sydney R. Snyder (eds), Fingerprints on History: The NATO Memoirs of Theodore C. Achilles (Kent, OH: Kent State University, 1992). 8. Alex Danchev, ‘Taking the Pledge: Oliver Franks and the Negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty’, Diplomatic History 15(2), p. 204; Escott Reid, Time of Fear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty 1947–1949 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977), p. 64. 9. Reid, pp. 167–84; Henderson, p. 79; Baylis p. 161; Reid pp. 211–12; FRUS 1948 (III), p. 339; FO Minute 12 January 1949, FO 371/79220/Z246; FO Minute 2 February 1949, FO 371/Z1139/1074/72G. 10. 6 September 1948, FO 371/73076. 11. FO Cable 17 August 1948, FO 371/72075/Z6636. 12. DCER 1948, p. 641; FO Minute 17 August 1948, FO 371/73075/Z6680. 13. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 178 14. Reid, p. 200. This also contains a useful and illuminating analysis of the membership issue, pp. 193–212. 15. FRUS 1948 (III), pp. 339–41. 16. Ibid., p. 340; E. Timothy Smith, ‘The Fear of Subversion: The United States and the Inclusion of Italy in the North Atlantic Treaty’, Diplomatic History, 7(2), pp. 139–55.

Notes 183 17. Antonio Varsori, ‘Great Britain and Italy 1945–56: The Partnership Between a Great Power and a Minor Power?’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 3(2), p. 206. 18. Martin H. Folly, ‘Britain and the Issue of Italian Membership of NATO 1948–49’, Review of International Studies, 13, pp. 177–96. 19. Reid, p. 200; FO Minute 11 December 1948, FO 371/73082/Z10182. 20. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 66. 21. Washington’s fears over the elections, and over Italian Communism in general, are described in E. Timothy Smith, ‘United States Security and the Integration of Italy into the Western Bloc 1947–1949’, in John R. Gillingham and Francis Heller (eds), NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992). pp. 73–98. For an examination of US intervention in support of the Christian Democrats, James E. Miller, ‘Taking the Gloves Off: The United States and the Italian Elections of 1948’, Diplomatic History, 7(1), pp. 35–55. 22. Folly, p. 183. 23. Smith, ‘The Fear of Subversion’, pp. 145–6. 24. Smith, ‘United States’, p. 153; FRUS 1948 (III), p. 766. 25. DCER 14 (1948), p. 723. 26. Ibid. Kennan’s superior, Lovett, also stated that ‘The view the United States would take of the importance of Italy for the North Atlantic Pact would probably depend on the view of the signatories of the Brussels Pact towards Italy’s inclusion in that Pact’, FRUS 1948 (III), p. 330. 27. Folly, pp. 185–6; Smith, ‘US Security and Italy’, pp. 146–7. For an illuminating account of French policy in the WET negotiations, based on research into French archival sources, see Bagnato, ‘France and the Origins of the Atlantic Pact’, pp. 79–110. 28. Folly, pp. 185–7. On the subject of the French position, see also Smith, ‘The Fear of Subversion’, pp. 146–8; Reid, p. 200–4. 29. Cited in Bagnato, p. 103. 30. Ibid.; Reid, p. 203. 31. Bagnato, p. 103; Folly, p. 186; Chauvel’s ideal solution in the first half of 1948 was for two systems, a North Atlantic and Mediterranean, with France as a ‘hinge’ between the two, Bagnato, p. 97. 32. The Dutch support for France was itself instrumental in nature, being largely in exchange for French support for Dutch policy in Indonesia. Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, ‘The Origins of Western Defense: Belgian and Dutch Perspectives 1940–1949’, in Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact, pp. 160–1. 33. Reid, pp. 206–7, 208. 34. Reid, p. 204; Folly, p. 188; FO Minute 14 January 1948, FO 371/79221/Z364. For the immediate reaction in the NATO Working Party, Cable 13 January 1948, FO 371/79221/Z246. 35. Leopoldo Nulti, ‘The Italian Military and the Atlantic Pact’, in Di Nolfo (ed.), The Atlantic Pact, pp. 256–7. 36. FO Minute 14 January, FO 371/79221/Z352; Romain H. Rainero, ‘Italy 1947–49: Military Integration and Neutralist Tendencies’, in Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster (eds), The Western Security Community: Common Problems and Conflicting National Interests During the Foundation Phase of the North Atlantic Alliance (Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 177; Norman Kogan, Italy and the Allies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956);

184 Notes

37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

48.

49.

also, Kogan, The Politics of Italian Foreign Policy (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963). Smith, ‘United States Security and Italy’, p. 149; Egidio Ortona, ‘Italy’s Entry into the Atlantic Alliance: The Role of the Italian Embassy in Washington 1948–1949’, NATO Review, 29(4), pp. 19–33. In August 1948, the US noted that ‘a strong public sentiment for maintaining a position of neutrality’ still existed in Italy, and it was feared that De Gasperi’s election victory ‘did no more than momentarily consolidate’ the pro-West constituency. Review of the World Situation 19 August 1948, Box 204, PSF-NSC Files, HSTL. Smith, ‘The Fear of Subversion’, p. 148. Ibid.; Memo of Conversation 11 February 1949, Box 64, Acheson Papers, HTSL. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 13. The basic conclusion of the US JCS – that Italy’s inclusion would be less harmful than exclusion – seems to have been shared by the other parties to the WET talks. Memorandum of Conversation with the President, 2 March 1949, Acheson Papers, HSTL. The French view is discussed in Nikolaj Petersen, ‘Bargaining Power Among Potential Allies: Negotiating the North Atlantic Treaty 1948–9’, Review of International Studies, 12(3), pp. 187–203. The British position on Scandinavia is examined in Nikolaj Petersen, ‘Britain, Scandinavia and the North Atlantic Treaty 1948–9’, Review of International Studies, 8(2), pp. 251–68. For the US view, see Geir Lundestad, America, Scandinavia and the Cold War 1945–9 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); NSC 28/1, ‘The Position of the United States With Respect to Scandinavia’, NSC Files, PSF Box 204, HSTL; see Lundestad, pp. 74–6 for the developing US concern over the polar strategy. Petersen, ‘Britain, Scandinavia and the North Atlantic Treaty’, p. 251. Oral History: Halvard Lange, HSTL; NSC 28/1, p. 2. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 47. Bevin also informed Lange, in absolute secrecy, of the planned talks on 15 March 1948. Lange replied that ‘a strong body of opinion’ in Norway would be favourable, but was unsure about Denmark and Sweden, where he felt that a ‘neutrality complex’ was still prevalent, 15 March 1948, FO371/71485. Lundestad, p. 87. In fact, the US had even speculated on the possibility of buying Greenland from Denmark; Lundestad, p. 178; also Baylis p. 92; Henderson, pp. 11–12; Kaplan, ‘NATO and the United States’, pp. 20–1; Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, ‘The Peutagon Negotiations, March 1948: The Launching of the North, Atlantic Treaty’, International Affairs, 59(3), p. 360. Moreover, Norway, Sweden and Denmark had held talks on military cooperation during 1946–7. One author has argued that these talks may have contributed directly to later Scandinavian–Soviet tension and the inclusion of Finland into the Soviet bloc. Jukka Nevakivi, ‘Scandinavian Talks on Military Cooperation in 1946–1947: a Prelude to the Decisions of 1948–1949’, Cooperation and Conflict: Nordic Journal of International Politics, 19(3), pp. 165–76. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd from Nikolaj Petersen, ‘Danish and Norwegian Alliance Policies 1948–9: A Comparative Analysis’,

Notes 185

50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64.

Cooperation and Conflict: Nordic Journal of International Politics, 14(4), p. 196, © Sage Publications, 1982. Petersen, ‘Danish and Norwegian Alliance Policies’, pp. 193–210; Memorandum of Conversation 11 March 1949, Acheson Papers, HTSL. Lundestad, p. 309. This was an accurate assumption: the Icelandic government made it plain to Acheson that Norwegian and Danish membership was ‘a necessity’ if the North Atlantic Treaty was to be ‘politically palatable’ to the Icelandic public, FRUS 1949 (IV), p. 22. Olav Riste (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1985), pp. 137–8; Reid, pp. 274–5. Olav Riste, ‘The Reluctant European: Norway’s Attitude to Military Integration 1948–50’ in Wiggershaus and Foerster, The Western Security Community, pp. 185–97; Cable 8 February 1948, FO 371/79229/Z1780; Lundestad, p. 353. In talks with the US in September 1948, Lange claimed that public opinion in Norway ‘might not be prepared to accept what would amount to a break of traditional ties with Sweden until every avenue of cooperation [had been] painstakingly explored’. In other words, the SDU had to be seen to fail. FRUS 1948 (III), p. 371. General Marshall regarded the Danish defence problem as virtually insoluble, an opinion shared by British and US service chiefs: Lundestad, p. 346. Denmark’s exposed strategic position was one reason why the Brussels powers were reluctant to extend a Brussels Treaty guarantee. Memo 3 December 1948, PSF-NSC File, Box 220, HSTL. Nikolaj Petersen, ‘Abandonment vs Entrapment: Denmark and Military Integration in Europe 1948–1951’, Cooperation and Conflict: Nordic Journal of International Politics, 21(3), pp. 169–86; Reid, p. 198; Lundestad, pp. 214–20. For an account of the Karlstad talks, see Lundestad, pp. 290–38. For details of the British plan, see Petersen, ‘Britain, Scandinavia and the North Atlantic Treaty’, pp. 260–2. Also FO 371/71458. The US JCS regarded a non-aligned SDU as ‘contrary to United States military interests’, since it would be ‘ineffective in withstanding USSR efforts to overrun the peninsula’ unless linked to the North Atlantic Treaty in some way, FRUS 1949 (IV), p. 101. Ibid., p. 261. Cited in Reid, p. 195. Albano Nogueira, ‘Portugal’s Special Relationship: The Azores, the British Connection and NATO’, in Lawrence Kaplan, Robert W. Clawson and Raimondo Luraghi (eds), NATO and the Mediterranean (Wilmington, DL: Scholarly Resources, 1985), pp. 80–5; Albano Nogueira, ‘The Making of the Alliance: A Portuguese Perspective’, NATO Review, 28(5), pp. 8–13. The Anglo–Portuguese alliance is examined in Glyn Stone, The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection, 1936–1994 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1994). DCER 14 (1948), p. 436. Ibid., p. 649. Cited in Nogueira, ‘Portugal’s Special Relationship’, p. 8. Cable 28 April 1948, FO 371/73305; Alvaro Vasconcelos, ‘Portuguese Defence Policy: Internal Politics and Defence Commitments’, in John Chipman (ed.),

186 Notes NATO’s Southern Allies: Internal and External Changes (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 93–4. 65. Cable 4 January 1949, FO 371/79218/Z19. For the similar assurances given to Portugal by the US, see FRUS 1949 (IV), p. 19. 66. ‘The Making of the Alliance’, p. 9. 67. Anton W. DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd edn (London: Yale University Press, 1986); Josef Joffe, ‘Europe’s American Pacifier’, Foreign Affairs, 54, pp. 64–83.

3 The accession of Greece and Turkey, 1947–52 1. Bruce R. Kuniholm, ‘Turkey and NATO’, in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Robert W. Clawson and Raimondo Luraghi (eds), NATO and the Mediterranean (Wilmington, DL: Scholarly Resources, 1985), pp. 215–37. 2. Thanos Veremis, ‘Greek Security: Issues and Prospects’, in Jonathan Alford (ed.), Greece and Turkey: Adversity in Alliance (London: IISS, 1984), pp. 1–42, 2. 3. Lawrence S. Kaplan, A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military Assistance Program 1948–1951 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1980), pp. 7–8. 4. Bruce R. Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey and Greece (Guildford, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 6–20; David Barchard, Turkey and the West (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul for the RIIA, 1985), p. 1; Ferenc A. Váli, Bridge Across the Bosporus: The Foreign Policy of Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 124–5; Barchard, p. 57. 5. Váli, p. 54; Kemal Karpat, ‘Political Developments in Turkey 1950–1970’, Middle East Studies, 8(3), pp. 349–75. For a summary of the six principles, Váli, pp. 55–6; Feroz, Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy 1950–1975 (London: Hurst, 1977) pp. 3–6. Ferudin Erkin also notes that Turkish foreign policy is the product of history, geography and Atatürk, Erkin, ‘Turkey’s Foreign Policy’, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 24(4), pp. 122–32. See also George C. McGhee, ‘Turkey Joins the West’, Foreign Affairs, 32(4), pp. 617–30; Barchard, pp. 8–12; Barchard, pp. 41–3; Ahmad, p. 390; Nuri Eren, Turkey Today and Tomorrow: An Experiment in Westernization (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), pp. 226–48; George Harris, The Troubled Alliance: Turkish–American Problems in Historical Perspective 1945–71 (Washington, DC: AEI, 1972), p. 16. 6. Barchard, p. 12; Váli, p. 25; Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War, pp. 15–16. 7. Váli, p. 115. 8. Bruce R. Kuniholm, The Near East Connection: Greece and Turkey in the Reconstruction and Security of Europe (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1984), pp. 7–8; Barchard, p. 12; Váli, p. 115. 9. Theodore Couloumbis, Greek Political Reaction to American and NATO Influences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 15; Victor Papacosma, ‘Greece and NATO’, in Kaplan et al. (eds), NATO and the Mediterranean, p. 190; Theodore Couloumbis, The United States, Greece and Turkey: The Troubled Triangle (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 10–11, 17–18; Veremis, p. 1.

Notes 187 10. Veremis, p. 23; Couloumbis, The United States, p. 15; Kaplan, A Community of Interests, p. 8; David H. Close (ed.), The Greek Civil War, 1943–1950: Studies of Polarization (London: Routledge, 1993); Couloumbis, Greek Political Reaction, p. 25, see pp. 27–32 for a discussion of Greece and the Truman Doctrine. 11. Couloumbis, The United States, pp. 28, 34–7. 12. Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 142–3; On US–Turkish relations prior to the Truman Doctrine, see David J. Alvarez, Bureaucracy and Cold War Diplomacy: The United States and Turkey 1943–1946 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1980); Kuniholm, The Near East Connection, p. 16. 13. Melvyn Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy and the Cold War: The United States, Turkey and NATO 1945–52’, Journal of American History, 71(4), p. 815; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 238–9, 286, 287. 14. Kuniholm, The Near East Connection, pp. 18–19. 15. Memorandum of Conversation 12 April 1949, Box 64, Acheson Papers, HSTL. 16. Harris, p. 40. The Turkish troops played an important role in Korea: General Walker later said that the US Eighth Army would have suffered ‘annihilation’ without the rearguard defensive action by the Turkish soldiers. McGhee, The US-Turkish-Mid. East Connection: How the Truman Doctrine and Turkeys NATO Entry Contained the Soviets (London: Macmillan, 1990) pp. 77–8; FRUS 1950 (III), p. 175; Harris, p. 40. 17. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Post-war American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 4; Paul Hammond, ‘NSC68: Prologue to Rearmament’, in Warner R. Schilling et al. (eds), Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 267–378; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 355–60; Samuel F. Wells, ‘Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat’, International Security, 4(3), pp. 116–48. 18. Gaddis, Strategies, p. 98; John Lewis Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990), p. 205. 19. Gaddis, Strategies, p. 93; Scott L. Bills, ‘The United States, NATO, and the Third World: Dominoes, Imbroglios and Agonizing Appraisals’, in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Sictor V. Papacosma, Mark Rubin and Ruth. V. Young (eds), NATO After Forty Years (Wilmington, DL: Scholarly Resources, 1990), p. 159. 20. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, p. 449. 21. Gaddis, Strategies, p. 102; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, p. 366; Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War 1945–92, 7th edn, p. 97. 22. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 332, 361. 23. Review of the World Situation 16 August 1950, Box 208, PSF-NSC Files, HSTL. 24. Wampler, Robert Allan, ‘Ambiguous Legacy: The United States, Great Britain and the Foundation of NATO Strategy 1948–1957’ (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1991), pp. 4–5. 25. Ibid, p. 14; Royal Institute of International Affairs, Atlantic Alliance: NATO’s Role in the Free World (London: RIIA, 1952), p. 25; Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ‘Eisenhower’s Right Flank’, Foreign Affairs, 29(3), pp. 651–63; Hugh Faringdon, Confrontation: The Strategic Geography of NATO and the Warsaw Pact (London: Routledge, 1986), pp. 151–95.

188 Notes 26. Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy and the Cold War’, p. 814. 27. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, p. 419. 28. Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years 1949–54 (Paris: NATO, 1955), p. 48; The work of the Council of Deputies is also covered in Robert S. Jordan, The NATO Staff/Secretariat 1952–7 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). 29. For a detailed discussion of the development of NATO’s military committess, and a sharp critique of the Standing Group, see Douglas L. Bland, The Military Committee of the North Atlantic Alliance: A Study of Structure and Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1991). The important role of SHAPE and SACEUR is noted by John Duffield in Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). 30. FRUS 1950 (I), p. 157. 31. Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy and the Cold War’, pp. 818–9. 32. FRUS 1951 (III), p. 574. 33. The difficulties inherent in the alternative solutions are summarised in FRUS 1950 (III), p. 574. 34. Kaplan, p. 119; Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy and the Cold War’, p. 821; FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 278–9. 35. For an account of the Foreign Ministers meeting, FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 1218–23. The Council of Deputies meeting is covered on pp. 326–7. 36. FRUS 1950 (III), p. 237. 37. FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 257–61. 38. FRUS 1950 (III), p. 283, pp. 279–84. 39. McGhee, The US–Turkish–Middle East Connection, pp. 73, 105; Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy and the Cold War’, pp. 822–3. 40. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Life in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970), p. 279; FO Minute, 9 April 1951, FO 371/96539/WU11923; Cable 4 May 1951, FO 371/96540/WU11923/29. The text of the US aide-mémoire is in FRUS 1951 (III), pp. 520–2. 41. FO 371/96544/WU11923/109; FRUS 1951 (III), p. 425; Alan Henrikson, ‘The Creation of the North Atlantic Alliance 1948–52’, Naval War College Review, 37(1) p. 20. 42. Roger Hilsman, ‘NATO: The Developing Strategic Context’, in Klaus Knorr (ed.), NATO and American Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); also Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, p. 420; Robert Hunter, Security in Europe (London: Elek, 1969), p. 103. 43. Cable 18 May 1951, FO 371/96541/WU11923/42. 44. FO 371/96540/WU11923/25G; FO 371/96541/WU11923/55G; 9 May 1951, FO 371/96541/WU11923/37; FO 371/96540/WU11923/25G; Cable 16 May 1951, FO 371/96540/WU11923/34. 45. FO 371/96540/WU11923/35. 46. Cable 27 July 1951, FO 371/96549/WU11923/220G. 47. Cable 29 June 1951, FO 371/96547/WU11923/158G. On the British aim of involving the US in the Middle East, see Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, the United States and the Transfer of Power in the Middle East 1945–1962 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996). An FO briefing paper (23 May 1951) on Greek–Turkish membership noted that ‘an aloofness [by the USA] from the Middle East has always been one of the serious holes in our defence arrangements’, FO 371/96542/WU11923/75G.

Notes 189 48. FO minute, 20 July 1951, FO 371/96548/WU11923/203. 49. FRUS 1951 (V), pp. 561, 1262; FO Minute 16 July 1951, FO 371/96548/ WU11923/186; FO Minute, 29 June 1951, FO 371/96547/WU11923/ 158G; FRUS 1951 (III), pp. 592–3. 50. FRUS 1951 (III), p. 561. 51. Cable 17 July 1951, FO 371/96548/WU11923/204G. 52. Cable 31 August 1951, FO 371/96550/WU11923/246G; Cable 2 August 1951, FO 371/96549/WU11923/229. 53. FRUS 1951 (III), pp. 1250–7. 54. FRUS 1951 (III), p. 1262. FO Brief, 31 August 1951, FO 371/WU11923/254. 55. Cable 18 May 1951, FO 371/96541/WU11923/45. 56. Cable 24 May 1951, FO 371/96542/WU11923/65. 57. FRUS 1951 (III), pp. 713–14; FO brief, 20 February 1952, FO 371/ 102474/WU11923/35G. FRUS 1951 (III), pp. 592–3. 58. Charles Kegley and Gregory Raymond, When Trust Breaks Down: Alliance Norms and World Politics (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).

4 The Federal Republic of Germany and NATO, 1949–55 1. Timothy Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (London: Aldwych Press, 1981); Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 2. Dirk Verheyen, The German Question: A Cultural, Historical and Geopolitical Exploration (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 2–3; Barry Buzan et al., The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for the Post-Cold War Era (London: Pinter, 1990); Anne-Marie Burley, ‘The Once and Future German Question’, Foreign Affairs, 68(5), pp. 65–83. 3. Verheyen, p. 3. 4. C. J. Bartlett, The Global Conflict: The International Rivalry of the Great Powers 1880–1990, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1994), pp. 107–13. 5. Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 13. 6. Karl W. Deutsch and Lewis J. Edinger, Germany Rejoins the Powers: Mass Opinion, Interest Groups and Elites in Contemporary German Foreign Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959), p. 19; Buzan et al., p. 114. 7. Deutsch and Edinger, p. 17. 8. Christoph Bertram, ‘The German Question’, Foreign Affairs, 69(2); Verheyen, p. 36. 9. Herman-Josef Rupieper, ‘American Policy Toward German Unification 1949–1955’, in Jeffrey M. Diefendorf, Axel Frohn and Herman-Josef Rupieper (eds), American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany 1945–1955 (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1993), p. 47. 10. Anton W. DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd edn (London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 149. 11. DePorte, p. 149; also Wolfram Hanrieder, West German Foreign Policy 1949–63: International Pressure and Domestic Response (Stanford, CA: Stanford

190 Notes

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

University Press, 1967), pp. 33–77; V. R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, Economics and Politics in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 184. Garton Ash, p. 2; on Adenauer’s foreign policy, see Frank R. Pfetsch, West Germany: Internal Structures and External Relations (New York: Praeger, 1988), pp. 178–87; Hans Jürgen Küsters, ‘West Germany’s Foreign Policy in Western Europe 1949–1958: The Art of the Possible’, in Clemens Wurm (ed.), Western Europe and Germany: The Beginning of European Integration 1945–1960 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995), pp. 55–85. Terence Prittie, Konrad Adenauer 1876–1967 (London: Tom Stacey, 1972), p. 141; James L. Richardson, Germany and the Atlantic Alliance: The Interaction of Strategy and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 11. On the German opposition to rearmament, see Gordon A. Craig, ‘NATO and the New German Army’, in William Kaufman (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), esp. pp. 198–204; FO Minute 6 November 1950, FO 371/85057/C7239. Hanrieder, p. 39; Prittie, pp. 145–170; Deutsch and Edinger, pp. 29–30. Text of North Atlantic Treaty in Catherine McArdle Kelleher, The Future of European Security: An Interim Assessment (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), p. 180. FO Minute 11 May 1950, FO 371/85048/C3183. Robert Endicott Osgood, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 72; Daniel Lerner, ‘Reflections on France in the World Arena’, in Daniel Lerner and Raymond Aron (eds), France Defeats EDC (New York: Praeger, 1957), p. 213. On the origins of the strategy, see James A. Blackwell Jr., ‘In the Laps of the Gods: The Origins of NATO Forward Defense’, Parameters, 15(4), pp. 64–75. Gustav Schmidt, ‘ “Tying” (West) Germany into the West – But To What? NATO? WEU? The European Community?’, in Wurm (ed.), p. 137; Steve Weber, ‘Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO’, in John Gerard Ruggie (ed.), Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 233–94. Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 322, 383–5, emphasis added; FRUS 1950 (III), p. 167; Kaplan, A Community of Interests, p. 261. The rearmament issue had been the principal item on the agenda of the NATO Council of Deputies for most of the summer of 1950, FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 136–70. In July, a Standing Group report to the Deputies had recommended that they work to convince their governments of the need for increased forces to implement North Atlantic defence, p. 162. The US proposal had only been put together as a package after a heated confrontation in Washington between the State and Defense Departments. Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Life in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970), pp. 437–40; Acheson and most of his Department had opposed the package deal, fearing (correctly) that it would create serious divisions with the allies. Acheson, p. 440; also John S. Duffield, Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 38–47.

Notes 191 22. Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 79; Dirk Stikker, Men of Responsibility: A Memoir (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 297–9. 23. Nikolaj Petersen, ‘Abandonment vs Entrapment: Denmark and Military Integration in Europe 1948–51’, Cooperational Conflict: Nordic Journal of International Politics 21(3), p. 178. Moreover, Montgomery had argued that ‘the defence of Denmark is immensely important to our strategy in the North. If Denmark is held, we can close the Baltic’. Note 14 July 1951, Bernard Montgomery Folder 3, Box 82, Name Series, Pre-Presidential File, DDEL. FO Cable 15 July 1950, FO 371/85049/C4574. For a discussion of the interrelationship between Korea, the forward strategy and German rearmament, see Ireland, pp. 185–95; Osgood, pp. 72–85. 24. Lawrence S. Kaplan, A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military Assistance Program 1948–1951 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1980), pp. 111–2; FRUS 1950 (III), p. 265. Rumours that the US intended to set up a German Army had been circulating for more than a year, and had had to be refuted by Truman and Acheson. Peter Calvocoressi, Survey of International Affairs 1949–50 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 150–1; Jan Van Der Harst, ‘From Neutrality to Alignment: Dutch Defense Policy 1945–51’, in John R. Gillingham and Francis Heller (eds), NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 38; FRUS 1950 (III), p. 309; Ernst Van Der Beugel, From Marshall Aid to Atlantic Partnership: European Integration as a Concern of American Foreign Policy (London: Elsevier, 1966), p. 262. 25. Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years: 1949–54 (Paris: NATO, 1955), p. 32; Hajo Holborn, ‘Germany’s Role in the Defense of Western Europe’, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 26, p. 156; Robert McGeehan, The German Rearmament Question: American Diplomacy and European Defense After World War Two (London: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 40; Ismay, p. 186. 26. Kaplan, A Community of Interests, p. 115. Calvocoressi also notes Adenauer’s attempts to reassure France about Germany’s future behaviour, and points out that ‘the French did not distrust Dr Adenauer or his colleagues. They feared what might happen if the Bonn government were some day swept away. Dr Adenauer’s assurances were therefore somewhat beside the point’, Calvocoressi, p. 163; FRUS 1950 (III), p. 353; FO 371/85055/C6002. 27. For an account of the negotiations, see FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 293–312; McGeehan, pp. 49–62. 28. Cable 16 September 1950, FO 371/85054/C5912; FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 406–10; Fursdon, p. 97. 29. Saki Dockrill, Britain’s Policy for West German Rearmament 1950–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 34; Cable 14 September 1950, FO 371/85053/C5865. 30. Osgood also implies this when he claims that the French put forward EDC as a postponement exercise. Dockrill, p. 41; Osgood, p. 55. 31. McGeehan, p. 11. 32. FO Minute 25 September 1950, FO 371/85056/C6218. 33. William I. Hitchcock, ‘France, the Western Alliance and the Origins of the Schuman Plan’, Diplomatic History, 21(4), pp. 603–30.

192 Notes 34. FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 415–28. On the opposition to EDC, see McGeehan, pp. 77–8. 35. FRUS 1950 (III), p. 436. 36. Kaplan, NATO and the United States, p. 86. 37. FRUS 1950 (III), pp. 505–6. 38. For an examination of Washington’s change of heart, see Dockrill, pp. 68–73. On US diplomacy during the EDC negotiations, see James G. Hershberg, ‘ “Explosion in the Offing”: German Rearmament and American Diplomacy 1953–55’, Diplomatic History, 16(4), pp. 511–54. Letter 13 December 1951, Robert A. Lovett Folder 1, Box 72, Name Series, Pre-Presidential File, DDEL; Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 1890–1952 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 507–10. Ike’s support was also backed by that of the US High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy; McGeehan, p. 136; 25 November, PREM 8/1429. 39. For accounts, see Kaplan, pp. 149–53; Acheson, pp. 490–2; David R. Kepley, ‘The Senate and the Great Debate of 1951’, Prologue, 14(4), pp. 213–26; Ted Galen Carpenter, ‘United States Policy at the Crossroads: The Great Debate of 1950–1’, International History Review, 8(3), pp. 345–516. 40. Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Boston, MA: Twayue, 1988), p. 48. 41. On the doubts, see Dockrill. Regarding the suspicions, see Geoffrey Warner, ‘The Labour Governments and the Unity of Western Europe’, in Ritchie Ovendale (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the British Labour Governments 1945–51 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984), p. 75, who notes Bevin’s view of EDC as ‘a cancer in the Atlantic body’. 42. Stikker; also Fursdon, pp. 126–7; 130–1; McGeehan, pp. 162–3; Van Der Harst, p. 39. 43. FRUS 1951 (V), p. 581. Belgium voiced very similar concerns, pp. 582–3. 44. For an examination of the British decision to support EDC, see Dockrill, pp. 73–9; John Young, ‘German Rearmament and the European Defence Community’, in John W. Young (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Churchill’s Peacetime Administration 1951–1955 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), pp. 81–108; Warner, pp. 61–82. 45. Dockrill, p. 97; McGeehan, p. 192. McGeehan describes the Lisbon NAC as ‘the zenith of the EDC’s fortunes’. 46. Fursdon, p. 116. This was, of course, very much the prevalent reasoning in Washington as well. 47. Fursdon, p. 132. 48. Dockrill, p. 136. An Anglo–American Study Group had briefly looked into the question in July, but with little tangible result. The US was therefore compelled to think quickly after the EDC’s failure. For a clear statement of their emerging position – which strongly favoured a NATO option – see FRUS 1952–4 (V), pp. 1164–70. By the time of the Nine-Power Conference, the US had finalised a position largely based on this, pp. 1268–71. 49. McGeehan, p. 236. 50. Trachtenberg, p. 123. 51. Dockrill, pp. 147–9; Cable 10 September 1954, Sept 54 Folder 2, Box 4, Dulles–Herter Series, Ann Whitman File, DDEL.

Notes 193 52. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1309. 53. The Nine-Power Conference is examined in FRUS 1952–4 (V), pp. 1294–1364; Dockrill, pp. 143–50. 54. Norway and Portugal both argued that the failure of EDC had put the issue back into the hands of the Alliance, but were overruled. DCER 1954, p. 642. 55. DCER 1954, p. 624. 56. Dockrill, p. 145. 57. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1211; also p. 1154; DCER 1954, p. 624. 58. DCER 1954, p. 624. 59. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1153; DCER 1954, p. 639. 60. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1154. 61. FO Minute 8 September 1954, FO 371/113355/WU1198/427; Cable 15 September 1954, FO 371/113357/WU1198/478. 62. FRUS 1952–4 (V), pp. 1305–6. 63. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1165. 64. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1215. 65. FRUS, 1952–4 (V), pp. 1335–45. 66. 1 October 1954, FO 371/109775/W10714/7. 67. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1217. 68. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1257. 69. Cable 17 September 1954, FO 371/113359/WU1198/539. 70. Cable 18 September 1954, FO 371/113359/WU1198/543. 71. On Benelux support for the Brussels Treaty plan, Cable 12 September 1954, FO 371/113359/WU1198/541. 72. Cables 12 and 13 September 1954, both in FO 371/113355/WU1198/430. 73. FO 371/113363/WU1198/666. 74. Cable, 23 September 1954, FO 371/113361/WU1198/600. 75. FO Minute 1 September 1954, FO 371/113351/WU1198/331. 76. The text of the Treaty is in John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO 1942–49 (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 152–6. 77. FRUS 1952–4 (V), pp. 1356–7. 78. Stikker, p. 315; Cable 29 September 1954, Sept 54 Folder 1, Box 4, Dulles–Herter Series, Ann Whitman File, DDEL. 79. Ireland, p. 227. 80. 30 January 1954, FO 371/113336/WU1197/68. 81. Cable 3 September 1954, Sept 54 Folder 1, Box 4, Dulles–Herter Series, Ann Whitman File, DDEL. 82. The Saar had been an intractable issue. The region was a key industrial centre, and wartime plans had been made to separate it from Germany. France lobbied unsuccessfully for the region to be incorporated into the French economy, and made resolution of the issue a precondition of winding up the Occupation Statute of Germany. Under the Paris Agreement, the Saar was temporarily placed under a European statute in the WEU, but by 1957 German political sovereignty was restored. FRUS 1952–4 (V), p. 1215; Wolfram F. Hanrieder and Graeme Auton, The Foreign Policies of West Germany, France and Britain (Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), pp. 119–22. 83. Michael Stürmer, cited in Ash, p. 21.

194 Notes

5 Spain joins the Alliance, 1982–6 1. Robert Hunter, Security in Europe (London: Elek, 1969). 2. The term ‘quasi-alliance’ is from Arthur Whitaker, Spain and Defense of the West: Ally and Liability (New York: Harper Bros, 1961). 3. Federico S. Tulchin, ‘Epilogue’, and Joachín Abril Martorell, ‘Spain: A Singular Ally’, in Joseph S. Gil and Federico S. Tulchin (eds), Spain’s Entry Into NATO: Conflicting Political and Strategic Perspectives (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1988), p. 165. On Spain’s long-standing absence from the European system, see Charles T. Powell, ‘Spain’s External Relations 1898–75’, in Richard Gillespie, Ferdinand Rodrigo and Jonathan Story (eds), Democratic Spain: Reshaping External Relations in a Changing World (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 11–29; William T. Salisbury, ‘Western Europe’, in J. Cortada, Spain in the Twentieth Century World, pp. 97–120; Paul Preston and Denis Smyth, Spain, the EEC and NATO, Chatham House Paper, 22 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul for the RIIA, 1984), pp. 24–5. 4. P. M. H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (London: Longman, 1986), esp. pp. 212–19. 5. Powell, pp. 18–19; Whitaker, p. 4. 6. Charles R. Halstead ‘Spanish Foreign Policy 1936–1978,’ in Cortada (ed.), Spain, pp. 41–96. 7. 8 March 1948 in AN 1196/1195/45G, and 21 March 1948 in AN 1239/1195/45G, both in FO 371/68067. For the views of the military, FO Minute 22 September 1948, FO 371/73078/Z8060/2307/72G, FO Minute 8 March 1949, FO 371/79235Z2311/1074. 8. FO 371/73075/Z6680/2307/72G. 9. For an account of the Madrid Pacts and their significance, see Whitaker, pp. 45–9; Benny Pollack with Graham Hunter, The Paradox of Spanish Foreign Policy: Spain’s International Relations From Franco to Democracy (London: Pinter, 1987), p. 26. 10. On the post-war isolation of Spain, see Whitaker, pp. 37–40; Pollack, pp. 13–21. 11. Simon Duke, United States Military Forces and Installations in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 12. Duke, p. 253. 13. Pollack, p. 33. John Davis Lodge, US Ambassador to Spain from 1955 to 1961, agreed that the Madrid Pacts were ‘predicated on the future stability of the political situation in Spain’. The US therefore acquired an unavoidable interest in the stability of the Franco regime. Interview 3, Oral History, HSTL. 14. See, for example, Bilateral Position Paper, Spanish Membership in NATO, 3 December 1957, Folder: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Box 47 Subject Series, Ann Whitman File, DDEL; FO Minute January 14 1960, in FO 371/154154. On the possible effects of Spanish admission on domestic politics, Cable 29 January 1960, in FO 371/154155/WU1193/12. 15. Robert Allen Wampler, ‘Ambiguous Legacy: The United States, Great Britain and the Foundations of NATO Strategy 1948–1957’ (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1991), p. 5. 16. Telegram, Acting Secretary of State to Spanish Embassy, 6 March 1951, FRUS 1951 (IV), p. 803.

Notes 195 17. Hal Klepak, Spain: NATO or Neutrality? (Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University Centre for International Relations, 1980), pp. 65–7; Angel Viñas, ‘Spain, the United States and NATO’, in Christopher Abel and Nissa Torrents (eds), Spain: Conditional Democracy (London: Croom Helm, 1984). 18. ‘Introduction’, in James Chace and Earl C. Ravenal, Atlantis Lost: US– European Relations After the Cold War (New York: New York University Press); Walter Laquer, Europe In Our Time: A History 1945–1992 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), pp. 167–96, 415–35. 19. Stephen Gill, ‘Introduction’, in Stephen Gill (ed.), Atlantic Relations: Beyond the Reagan Era (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 11. 20. Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1988), p. 149, pp. 152–8. 21. Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1982), p. 212. 22. Halliday, pp. 212–13. 23. Pollack, p. 35; Juan J. Linz, ‘Spain and Portugal: Critical Choices’, in David S. Landes (ed.), Western Europe: The Trials of Partnership (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1977). 24. Pollack, p. 35; also Linz, p. 237. 25. Pollack, pp. 153–4. 26. ‘Will Spain Deign to Join NATO?’, The Economist, 279, 13 June 1981, pp. 53–4. 27. On the almost unanimous support for Spanish membership, see Preston and Smyth, pp. 1–2, who point out that the situation was almost an exact mirror of the Cold War position. Also ‘Coy Mistress’, The Economist, 264, 2 July 1977, p. 53. 28. Duke, p. 257. 29. The Alliance publicly acknowledged this: ‘What Role for Spain in NATO?’, The Atlantic Community Quarterly, 20(2), pp. 139–42. 30. Javier Tusell, ‘The Transition to Democracy and Spain’s Membership in NATO’, in Gil and Tulchin (eds), Spain’s Entry into NATO, p. 11. 31. Gregory Treverton, ‘Spain, the United States and NATO: Strategic Facts and Political Realities’, in Gil and Tulchin (eds), Spain’s Entry into NATO, p. 136. 32. On naval strategy and the European Central Front, see Robert Komer, ‘Maritime Strategy vs Coalition Defénse’, Foreign Affairs, 60(5), pp. 1124–1144. The question of the Sixth Fleet’s strategic configuration is addressed in Ken Booth, ‘US Naval Strategy: Problems of Survivability, Usability and Credibility’, Naval College War Review, 31(1), Summer 1978, pp. 11–28. 33. Preston and Smyth note that in 1981 65 per cent of western oil supply went via the Canary Islands, pp. 16–17. For West European states, this figure was 90 per cent: Robert S. Jordan, The NATO Staff/secretariat 1952–7 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 37. Antonio Zea, ‘Should Spain Join NATO?’, Naval College War Review, 32 (November–December 1979), p. 82. 34. Klepak, p. 35. 35. For example, Thomas Carothers argued in 1981 that Spain’s potential military contribution to the Alliance was ‘overstated’, and Treverton also argues that Spanish participation in the Alliance military structure was basically an irrelevance: NATO’s requirements of Spain, he claims, were all served by the Madrid Pacts. Conversely, Jed Snyder argues that ‘Spain’s military contribu-

196 Notes

36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

tion to NATO is not insignificant’, and that the forces supplied by Spain would be of clear importance in the West Mediterranean and Canary Islands: Jed Snyder, Defending the Fringe: NATO, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987). Also The Military Balance 1984 –5 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1984). Salisbury, ‘Western Europe’, p. 110. Snyder, p. 66. For a brief account of the Spanish decision to join the Alliance, and Spain’s wider European security policy, see Jonathan Story, ‘Spain in the European Diplomatic System’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 2(1), pp. 54–78. Martorell, p. 42. On Ceuta and Melilla, see Pollack, p. 159; Viñas, p. 46. On Spain’s attempts to link them with its NATO application, see Viñas, pp. 50–2. See Pollack, pp. 137–46, on the difficulties with the EEC application. Emilio A. Rodríguez, ‘Atlanticism and Europeanism: NATO and Trends in Spanish Foreign Policy’, in Gil and Tulchin (eds), Spain’s Entry into NATO, p. 63. On the cross-party consensus on the EEC, see Pollack, p. 138, who notes the ‘total agreement that no economically viable alternative to the European Community existed’. Treverton, pp. 122–6; Rodríguez, p. 66. Linz, writing in 1976, comments that ‘One can expect that Spain’s first democratic government will put high on its agenda radical renegotiation of the special relationship with the United States, particularly the agrement on military bases’. Treverton, p. 126; Linz, p. 280. Philippe C. Schmitter, ‘An Introduction to Southern European Transition from Authoritarian Rule: Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Turkey’, in Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead (eds), Transitions From Authoritarian Rule: Southern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 4. Preston and Smyth, p. 29; also Edward Malefakis ‘Spain and its Francoist Heritage’, in John H. Herz, From Dictatorship to Democrcay: Coping With the Legacies of Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 215–30; Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurua, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 49–78, 79–134. The Economist, 263, 2 April 1977, p. 29; Kenneth Medhurst, ‘The Military and Prospects for Spanish Democracy’, West European Politics, 1(1), p. 47. On Juan Carlos’ reforms, see David C. Jordan, Spain, the Monarchy and the Atlantic Community (Cambridge, MA: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1979), p. 78. Pedro Vilanova, ‘Spain: The Army and the Transition,’ in David S. Bell, Democratic Politics in Spain: Spanish Politics After Franco (London: Pinter, 1983), p. 145. José María Maravall and Julián Santamaría, ‘Political Change in Spain and the Prospects for Democracy’, in O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead (eds), Transitions, pp. 89–93; David Gilmour, The Transformation of Spain: From Franco to the Constitutional Monarchy (London: Quartet, 1985), p. 230; Antonio Sanchez-Gijon, ‘Spain and the Atlantic Alliance’, Survival, 18(6), p. 249. Vilanova, p. 145; Sanchez-Gijon, p. 253.

Notes 197 50. Pollack, pp. 112–21; Klepak, pp. 50–62; Jordan pp. 13–15. There had also been some opposition to NATO membership from the far Right. This was driven in part by residual resentment at Spain’s long exclusion from the Alliance, but also by concerns about democratisation of the Army and a consequent loss of its Francoist identity. 51. Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (London: Methuen, 1986). 52. Jonathan Story, ‘Spain’s External Relations Redefined, 1975–89’, in Gillespie, Rodrigo and Story, Democratic Spain, p. 37. On the widespread assumption that Spain would join the military structure, ‘What Role for Spain in NATO?’, p. 140; ‘Spain becomes 16th member of the Alliance’, NATO Review, 30(3), pp. 1–3. 53. Story, p. 37. On the wider ideological development of the PSOE, see Donald Share, ‘Two Transitions: Democratisation and the Evolution of the Spanish Left’, West European Politics, 8(1), pp. 82–103. 54. Story, p. 43. 55. Emphasis added. Rodríguez, p. 55. 56. The PSOE had three foreign policy pledges in its manifesto: abstention from East–West polarisation, entry into the EEC and a referendum on NATO. A. Rodríguez, p. 63. 57. Treverton, p. 125. 58. Gooch describes Gonzáles as ‘plucking victory from the very maw of adverse opinion polls’, Anthony Gooch, ‘A Surrealistic Referendum: Spain and NATO’, Government and Opposition, 21(3), pp. 300–16. 59. Duke, p. 259. 60. Peck, ‘Dialogue of the Deaf: Spanish Base Negotiations’, Defense News, 15 June 1987. 61. Cited in Fernando Rodrigo, ‘Western Alignment: Spain’s Security Policy’, in Gillespie, Rodrigo and Story (eds), Democratic Spain, p. 61. 62. Ibid., p. 64. 63. Raymond Aron, ‘Europe and the United States: The Relations Between Europeans and Americans’, in Landes Western Europe, p. 27. 64. Only Ireland, with its own individual security problems in the North, had managed to divorce belonging to the EEC from NATO membership.

Conclusions 1. See Dana Allin, ‘Can Containment Work Again?’, Survival, 37(1), pp. 60–2. Vlacav Havel of the Czech Republic has alluded to the post-Cold War opportunity for East European states to ‘return home’. See Catherine McArdle Kelleher, The Future of European Security: An Interim Assessment (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution), p. 86.

Select Bibliography Primary sources British government documents FO 371 Foreign Office Records, Public Record Office, London.

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Secondary sources Unpublished theses Snyder, Sydney R., ‘The Role of the International Working Group in the Creation of the North Atlantic Treaty December 1947–April 1949’ (PhD thesis, Kent State University, 1992). Wampler, Robert Allen, ‘Ambiguous Legacy: The United States, Great Britain and the Foundations of NATO Strategy 1948–1957’ (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1991). Weldes, Jutta E., ‘Constructing National Interests: The Logic of US National Security in the Post-War Era’ (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1993).

Books Alvarez, David J., Bureaucracy and Cold War Diplomacy: The United States and Turkey 1943–1946 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1980). Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation: My Life in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970). Ahmad, Feroz, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy 1950–1975 (London: Hurst, 1977). Ambrose, Stephen E., Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 1980–1952 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983). Ambrose, Stephen E., Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 7th edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993). Amme, Carl H., NATO Strategy and Nuclear Defense (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988). Ash, Timothy Garton, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Vintage, 1994). Aron, Raymond and August Heckscher, Diversity of Worlds: France and the United States Look at Their Common Problems (Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1957). Barchard, David, Turkey and the West (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul for the RIIA, 1985). Barker, Elisabeth, The British Between the Superpowers 1945–50 (London: Macmillan, 1983). Baylis, John, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO 1942–49 (London: Macmillan, 1993). Beer, Francis, Integration and Disintegration in NATO: Processes of Alliance Cohesion and Prospects for Atlantic Community (Columbus OH: Ohio State Univesity Press, 1969). Best, Richard A., ‘Cooperation With Like-Minded Peoples’: British Influences on American Security Policy 1945–9 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986). Bland, Douglas L., The Military Committee of the North Atlantic Alliance: A Study of Structure and Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1991). Brown, James, Delicately Poised Allies: Greece and Turkey: Problems, Policy Choices and Mediteranean Security (London: Brassey’s, 1991).

200 Select Bibliography Calleo, David, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order 1870 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Calleo, David, The Atlantic Fantasy: The US, NATO, and Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970). Carr, Raymond and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurua, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin 1987). Chipman, John (ed.), NATO’s Southern Allies: Internal and External Changes (London: Routledge, 1988). Cook, Don, Forging the Atlantic Alliance 1945–1950 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1950). Couloumbis, Theodore, Greek Political Reaction to Americian and NATO Influences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Couloumbis, Theodore, The United States, Greece and Turkey: The Troubled Triangle (New York: Praeger, 1983). DePorte, Anton W., Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd edn (London: Yale University Press, 1986). Deutsch, Karl, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). Di Nolfo, Ennio (ed.), The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991). Dockrill, Saki, Britain’s Policy for West German Rearmament 1950–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Duffield, John S., Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). Fedder, Edwin H., NATO: The Dynamics of Alliance in the Postwar World (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1973). Fox, William T. R and Annette B. Fox, NATO and the Range of American Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). Fursdon, Edward, The European Defence Community: A History (London: Macmillan, 1980). Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Post-war American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Gill, Federico S. and Joseph S. Tulchin (eds), Spain’s Entry Into NATO: Conflicting Political and Strategic Perspectives (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988). Gillingham, John R. and Francis Heller (eds), NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992). Gordon, Philip H., France, Germany and the Western Alliance (Oxford: Westview Press, 1995). Grosser, Alfred, The Western Alliance: European–American Relations Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1980). Harris, George, The Troubled Alliance: Turkish–American Problems in Historical Perspective 1945–71 (Washington, DC: AEI, 1972). Henderson, Sir Nicholas, The Birth of NATO (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982). Hunter, Robert, Security in Europe (London: Elek, 1969). Ismay, Lord, NATO: The First Five Years 1949–54 (Paris: NATO, 1955). Ireland, Timothy, Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (London: Aldwych Press, 1981).

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Jordan, Robert S., The NATO Staff/Secretariat 1952–7 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). Kaplan, Lawrence S., A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military Assistance Program 1948–1951 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1980). Kaplan, Lawrence S., NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1988). Kaplan, Lawrence S., Robert W. Clawson and Raimondo Luraghi (eds), NATO and the Mediterranean (Wilmington, DL: Scholarly Resources, 1985). Kennan, George F., Memoirs 1925–50 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967). Klepak, Hal, Spain: NATO or Neutrality? (Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University Centre for International Relations, 1980). Kuniholm, Bruce R., The Near East Connection: Greece and Turkey in the Reconstruction and Security of Europe (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1984). Leffler, Melvyn P., A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). Lerner, Daniel and Raymond Aron (eds), France Defeats EDC (New York: Praeger, 1957). Liska, George, Nations in Alliance: The Limits of Interdependence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962). Lundestad, Geir, America, Scandinavia and the Cold War 1945–9 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). Lundestad, Geir, ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration 1945–97 (London: Oxford University Press, 1998). Macmillan, Harold, Tides of Fortune 1945–55 (London: Macmillan, 1969). McGhee, George C., The US–Turkish–NATO Middle East Connection: How the Truman Doctrine and Turkey’s NATO Entry Contained the Soviets (London: Macmillan, 1990). McGeehan, Robert, The German Rearmament Question: American Diplomacy and European Defense After World War Two (London: University of Illinois Press, 1971). Osgood, Robert Endicott, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Pollack, Benny with Graham Hunter, The Paradox of Spanish Foreign Policy: Spain’s International Relations From Franco to Democracy (London: Pinter, 1987). Preston, Paul and Denis Smyth, Spain, the EEC and NATO, Chatham House Paper, 22 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul for the RIIA, 1984). Reid, Escott, Time of Fear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty 1947–1949 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977). Richardson, James L., Germany and the Atlantic Alliance: The Interaction of Strategy and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960). Riste, Olav (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years. European and Atlantic Defence 1947–1953 (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1985). Stikker, Dirk, Men of Responsibility: A Memoir (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Trachtenberg, Marc A., Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). Váli, Ferenc A., Bridge Across the Bosphorus: The Foreign Policy of Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971). Váli, Ferenc A., The Turkish Straits and NATO (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972).

202 Select Bibliography Verheyen, Dirk, The German Question: A Cultural, Historical and Geopolitical Exploration (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991). Whitaker, Arthur, Spain and Defense of the West: Ally and Liability (New York: Harper Bros, 1961). Wiggershaus, Norbert and Roland G. Foerster (eds), The Western Security Community: Common Problems and Conflicting National Interests During the Foundation Phase of the North Atlantic Alliance (Oxford: Berg, 1993). Wurm, Clemens (ed.), Western Europe and Germany: The Beginning of European Integration 1945–1960 (Oxford: Berg, 1995). Young, John, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe 1945–51 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984).

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Index Acheson, Dean 38–9, 72, 79 Adenauer, Konrad 100, 101, 104, 111, 115, 116, 117, 124–5 Atatürk, Kemal 64 Belgium 11, 18, 19, 21, 24, 34 and German membership 105, 106 and Italian membership 37–8 Bérard, Armand 35 Bevin, Ernest 18, 19–20, 41, 53, 106 Bohlen, Charles 26, 38, 47 Britain 11, 17, 18, 24, 50, 54, 71–2, 75 EDC and 109, 110–11 German membership and 102, 104–5, 106–7, 108, 112–13, 114–15, 116, 118, 119 Greek/Turkish membership and 68, 79, 80–1, 82, 83–4, 91, 92 Italian membership and 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38–9 Portugal and 47, 49 Scandinavia and 40–1, 44, 45–6 Spanish membership and 130, 131, 133 Brussels Treaty 18, 19–20, 21, 28, 30, 31, 34, 38, 46, 49, 51, 56, 116, 117, 118, 163 Canada 21, 26, 34, 38, 54 German membership and 106, 114 Greek/Turkish membership and 80–1 Italian membership and 29 Portuguese membership and 48 Spanish membership and 133 Clark, Ian 12 Cold War 3, 4, 40, 55–6, 62, 64, 66, 69–70, 141 end of 1 origins 14, 17–18

and NATO membership 50–3, 87–8, 88–90, 141–2, 157–9, 160, 162–7, 173–4, 175–7 Second Cold War 137–9, 157 Containment 16–17, 69–71, 76, 88, 89–90 see also NSC-68 Council of Foreign Ministers 18, 75, 77, 84, 106 Czech coup (1948) 51–2, 56 Danchev, Alex 25 Denmark 11, 20, 21, 26, 27, 42, 53 and German membership 104 and Greek/Turkish membership 79, 81, 83, 85 Scandinavian Defence Union and 43 signing North Atlantic Treaty 43–4, 44–5, 46, 164, 168 strategic importance 40, 41–2, 46–7, 59 DePorte, Anton 15 Dunkirk Treaty 18–19, 51 EDC 107–11, 112, 114, 116, 117, 118, 121–3, 125 Eden, Anthony 115, 116, 117, 118 EEC 136, 142, 146 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 73, 109, 110, 112, 118 ESCSC 107 European security system 3–4, 17–18, 21, 63, 100, 127, 128, 136, 156, 158, 163–4, 165–6 pre-1945 system 12–14, 128, 145 France 11, 18, 21, 24, 50, 54, 55, 58, 75 EDC and 108–9 German membership and 104, 105–6, 107, 113 Greek/Turkish membership and 68, 83–4, 91 204

Index Italian membership and 28–9, 34–6, 39 Spanish membership and 131, 133 Franco, General Francisco 47, 48, 127, 128–9, 131, 132, 133, 139, 141, 146, 148, 150 see also Spain

Italy 7, 11, 20, 21, 23, 27, 68, 141, 169 German membership and 106 requests membership 36–7, 58 North Atlantic Treaty membership of 28–39, 46–7, 52, 53, 54, 57–8, 58–9, 60, 76, 130 Jebb, Gladwyn

Germany, Federal Republic of 18, 19, 127, 128, 129, 130, 161 accession 1, 8, 74, 91, 163, 164, 168 creation of 99–102 EDC and 109, 110, 111, 115 NATO strategy and 103–7, 122–3 Paris Agreements 116–19 rearmament of 103–7, 107–9, 112–13, 115–18 Westernisation policy 100–1 WEU and 116–18 see also Adenauer, EDC, German Question German Question 13, 17–18, 50–1, 96–9, 101, 120–1, 122–3, 125, 165, 166 see also European security system Gibraltar 146, 149 González, Felipe 146, 147, 153 Greece 7, 18, 23, 27, 57, 63, 65–7, 138, 141, 147, 151 accession of 1, 8, 85–6, 93, 165, 168, 170, 172 and NATO strategy 73–4, 82–3, 84, 86–7, 94 strategic importance of 67–8 exclusion from NATO 31, 33, 62, 68, 77, 79–80, 81, 94–5 Heuser, Beatrice 6 Hickerson, John D. 19, 28, 29, 32, 33, 38 IBERLANT 145, 151, 15 Iceland 7, 11, 20, 26, 45 strategic importance 40 Ireland 21, 26, 42, 129 Ireland, Timothy D. 17, 96–7, 118–19

205

117

Kennan, George 16, 23, 27, 33, 34, 52, 99–100 Korean War 71–2, 104 Lange, Halvard 41, 46 Lorca, Perez 132 Luxembourg 11, 18, 21, 106 Marshall Aid 24 Marshall, George 18 Mediterranean Pact 31, 35, 76, 92 strategic issues in 30 Netherlands 11, 18, 19, 21, 24, 34, 38 and German membership 104, 105, 106, 110 and Greek/Turkish membership 79, 81, 83, 85 and Spanish membership 133, 140 NATO Council of Deputies in 74–5, 77, 80, 81–2, 84, 86, 106, 108, 109, 111, 114, 167–8 NAC 74, 75, 84–5, 104, 106, 109, 111–15 post-Cold War 1, 174–7 role of US in 5, 54–5, 56, 72, 90–1, 92–3, 123–4, 163–4, 169–71 Second Cold War and 136–9, 141–2, 156–9 SHAPE 75, 82, 83, 84, 86, 112 Standing Group in 75, 82, 84, 91–2, 103, 109, 116 strategy 68, 72–4, 79–80, 82–3, 86–7, 88, 90, 91–2, 102–7,

206 Index 112–13, 122–3, 123–4, 133–4, 142–4 taxonomy of membership in 3, 6–8, 58–61, 93–5, 123–6, 160–1, 171–3 see also Cold War, North Atlantic Treaty North Atlantic Treaty 11, 24, 28, 45, 47, 50, 52, 62–3, 101–2, 103, 118 geographical limits 23, 30, 61 ideology in 48, 49, 57, 59–60, 61, 62, 65 limited membership of 26–8, 46, 48, 56, 76–8 negotiation of 25–8, 53–4, 55–6 origins of 18–22, 24–6, 62 Washington paper 34, 42, 58 Working Group 25 Norway 7, 11, 20, 21, 26, 27, 52, 53 German membership and 104, 106, 114 Greek/Turkish membership and 79, 81, 83, 85 Scandinavian Defence Union and 43, 45–6 signing North Atlantic Treaty 40, 42–3, 44, 45, 46, 164, 168 Spanish membership and 133, 140 strategic importance of 40, 41–2, 46–7, 59 NSC-68 70–1, 72, 76, 89 see also containment, US Osgood, Robert 17 Pentagon Talks (1948) 20–1, 24, 41, 42, 48, 130 Pleven, René 107 see also EDC Portugal 7, 11, 18, 26, 27, 39, 42, 47–8, 114, 129, 130, 138, 147, 151, 168 NATO membership 21, 48–50, 53, 60 Spanish membership and 133, 134, 140, 145

strategic importance 46, 48, 49, 53, 165 PSOE 152, 153, 154, 155 Reid, Escott 29 Salazar, António de Oliveira 47, 48–50 Scandinavia strategic importance 40–2, 52–3 see also Denmark, Iceland, Norway, SDU Schmidt, Helmut 138 SDU 42–3, 44, 45–6, 52, 53 Soviet Union 3–4, 14, 42, 49, 52, 69 threat from 14–18, 41, 45, 64–5, 67–8, 70–1, 88–9, 137, 162, 163 see also Cold War Spaak, Henri 37 Spain 7, 18, 47–8 accession decision of 139–40, 145–56, 165, 168 alliance with US (Madrid Pacts) 131–2, 134–5, 139, 142, 143, 146–7, 154, 155–6, 158–9 democratisation in 147–51 EEC and 142, 146, 153, 156 exclusion from NATO 21, 53, 60, 127, 128, 129–36, 140–1, 165, 166 NATO referendum in 151–6 NATO strategy and 134, 135–6, 142–5, 151 strategic importance of 129–30, 130–1, 143–4 Spofford Plan 108–9 Sweden 20, 21, 43, 44, 45–6, 164 Truman Doctrine 66, 67, 71 Turkey 7, 23, 27, 31, 57, 63, 64–5, 130, 131, 141, 147 accession of 1, 8, 62–3, 85–6, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 172 desire for membership 64, 68–9, 76, 78–9, 90 exclusion from NATO 31, 33, 62, 68, 77, 79–80, 81, 94–5

Index NATO strategy and 73–4, 82–3, 83–4, 85–7, 93–4 strategic importance of 67–8 United States 11, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27, 49, 54, 63, 66, 75, 100, 137, 138 alliance with Spain (Madrid Pacts) 129, 131–2, 134–5, 139, 142, 143, 155–6 Cold War and 16–17, 69–72, 88–90 EDC and 108, 109–10, 110 German membership and 103–4, 105, 106, 108–9, 111, 114, 115, 116, 118–19, 133 Greek/Turkish membership and 67–8, 69, 71, 73–4, 75–7, 78–9, 82, 84–5, 89–90, 133

207

Italian membership and 31, 32–4, 36, 38–9 Portuguese membership and 47 role in NATO 5, 54–5, 56, 72, 90–1, 92–3, 123–4, 163–4, 169–71 Scandinavian membership and 40, 41–2, 43, 44, 45 Spanish membership and 131, 133 Vandenburg Resolution 40 WEU 116–18 see also Brussels Treaty ‘X’ article 16–17 see also Kennan, George Yugoslavia 127

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