NATO's Long-Term Defense Planning: Will It Work?

Abstract

Mindful of historical experience with coalitions and sobered by the ominous threat posed by the Soviet Union, the Western allies after World War II reached a consensus that there would not be sufficient time in the future for an ad hoc approach to coalition warfare. The result was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which emphasized organizational collaboration in anticipation of a military threat to any of the signatories of the treaty. This aspect of the alliance, combined with the political realities of the post-World War II international environment, committed the member nations to NATO's mutual defense more firmly than was stated in the explicitly treaty clauses. "Joint military action of the members of NATO," one authority on international organizations has observed, "is not so much a promise of their treaty as a premise of their organization."

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1981
Accession Number
ADA516878

Entities

People

  • David Jablonsky

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Defense Planning
  • Information Operations
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Nato
  • Second World War
  • Security
  • Treaties
  • Ussr
  • War
  • War Colleges

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • International Relations and European Studies
  • Strategic Security Studies