4th April
1949
NATO established
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established by 12
Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland,
Canada, and Portugal. The military alliance, which provided for a
collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly
increased American influence in Europe.
Greece, Turkey, and West Germany later joined NATO, but in 1966
France withdrew, citing American violations of the 1949 treaty. In
1955, the Warsaw Pact, a Soviet-led Eastern European alliance, was
established to counter NATO. In 1994, three years after the end of
the Cold War, NATO engaged in its first military action as part of
an international effort to end two years of fighting in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which
all left the Warsaw Pact upon its dissolution in 1991, joined NATO
in 1999.
