NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is by far the most important of a set of politico-military organizations of co-operating Western states set up after the Second World War, during the early part of the cold war, to protect non-communist states from a perceived threat from the Eastern bloc. Similar bodies, like the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) used to cover military threats elsewhere in the world, but it was NATO that survived and remained at the forefront of East–West relations. NATO’s membership includes the USA, Canada and most Western European countries, although some, such as Sweden, Ireland and Switzerland, have remained neutral states. France is only partially a member, having withdrawn from the integrated military structure in 1966. Although France has preferred to maintain a large degree of independence in defence policies, the French military have continued to co-operate and liaise with NATO, and could have been expected to play a full part in any war on the central front involving the Warsaw Pact. NATO works by co-ordinating the military capacities of its member states and allotting specific peacetime and wartime tasks. Under war conditions units of all the member states would come under a unified international command-structure, the head of which has always been a US general in recognition of the huge and disproportionate cost to the USA of NATO membership.
Much progress was made in the area of arms control during the 1980s not only in reducing the numbers of long-range nuclear missiles controlled by the USA and the then Soviet Union, but also in the withdrawal of intermediate and short-range nuclear weapons from the European continent itself.
Furthermore, the members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in November 1990, signed the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which was to reduce levels of conventional force in Europe and effectively confirmed the end of the cold war. With these developments, and the final dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO was left to seek a new justification for its existence; there was little support from member governments for the abolition of NATO, crucially because it provides a means of keeping the USA involved in European security. Militarily NATO was restructured to emphasize smaller and lighter forces which can be deployed easily to any trouble spot in Europe, and to reduce costs by relying much more heavily on reserves for the heavy battle formations that were previously its characteristic mode. NATO forces supported the UN operations in Bonsian and Herzegovina in the mid-1990s, and a NATO-led force assumed responsibility for peace-keeping in that country in December 1995. Two developments of great significance for NATO took place in March 1999. Firstly, full membership was accorded to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, three former member countries of the Warsaw Pact, despite Russian opposition. Secondly, a NATO force carried out air-raids on Yugoslavia in response to the conflict in Kosovo.
At the beginning of the 21st century the debate over the future of NATO had become complex, particularly as the European Union was eager to field its own military force which would necessarily draw on the same units that its member states dedicated to NATO. It was likely that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe would also have a role in the development of a multinational mutual-security arrangement for the whole of Europe.
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