Faltering NATO Alliance

Archive Report

Crisis in Atlantic Treaty Organization

Disarray in U.S. Relations With Western Europe

Twenty-five years after the signing of the agreement establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on April 4, 1949, the alliance is in a state of disarray. The Cold War factors which brought the allies together no longer seem valid in an era of detente and negotiation with the Soviet Union. So serious are the disagreements on the future of Nato and the common “partnership” that President Nixon has repeatedly postponed a trip to Europe and, on March 15 he spoke his harshest public words to date about the European allies. Appearing before the Executive Club of Chicago, he accused the Common Market countries1—all but Ireland are members of Nato—of trying to “gang up against ...

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