ABSTRACT
The North Atlantic Treaty forged an unbreakable security bond between Western Europe and North America. The Treaty marked a historic departure in US diplomacy. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a compulsory alliance during the Cold War without the option of exit for Europeans or North Americans, became, in 1990, a voluntary alliance with one. The chapter discusses the trajectory of NATO between from 1949 and 2019. The deterioration in Soviet–American relations in the immediate post-war period ensured that the United Nations would not emerge as an effective collective security organisation. The seeds of distrust sown in 1956 accelerated the French and British determination to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent. The end of the Cold War occasioned an unarticulated change in the balance of power within the alliance that required the US to accommodate the European demand for greater defence autonomy, equality, and sensitivity to European interests.
