25.5   The Marshall Plan and NATO

The Marshall Plan  

If Soviet expansionism were to be effectively contained, it would require more than military and financial help as offered states through the Truman Doctrine.  Postwar economic recovery in Western Europe was slow, if at all. The economies of Britain, France, Italy, and the Western German occupation zones had been exhausted by the war. Reconstruction required capital investment that their respective governments just did not have.  Unemployment and poverty were widespread. Hunger and despair were rampant.  In France and Italy, working class dissatisfaction led to increasing support for the communist parties in those countries. In the US, policymakers in the Truman administration worried that Western Europe could fall to communism without Stalin's having to move a single Red Army soldier westward. American security and economic well-being was dependent upon a prosperous Europe. Under the leadership of George F. Kennan, a committee of State Department economic experts set to work to find a way to save Europe. The result was a plan that was announced in June, 1947 by Secretary of State George Marshall as part of his commence address to Harvard University. It came to be called the Marshall Plan.

               The underlying aims of the Plan were both economic and political: economic in that a prosperous Europe was necessary for American economic wellbeing, political in that a prosperous Europe would not be attracted to communism.  Humanitarian and nonpolitical in its purpose, the European Recovery Program (ERP) - as the Marshall Plan was formally known - was opened to all European nations, including the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. 

              Condemning the Marshall Plan as “American imperialism,” the Soviets, as expected, refused to join the Plan and ordered their satellites not to cooperate. In 1949 Moscow established the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (Comecon), a cooperative economic organization for the Communist states.  By compelling the Eastern European economies to integrate with the Soviet economy, Comecon became another means whereby the Soviets further consolidated control over their satellites.  The Marshall Plan, however, revitalized Western Europe.

            The Marshall Plan worked in two ways.  1) The ERP member nations would consult with each other through a Paris-based Office for European Economic Cooperation and provide for their mutual recovery with whatever resources they had. What they could not get from each other, they could get from the US.  2) The US would provide outright financial grants for items of immediate consumption such as food and fuel and provide loans for the purchase of machinery and equipment.  The Marshall Plan, consequently, enabled the European states to provide for their own economic development without becoming dependent upon the United States. 

          By 1952 when the Plan ended, Western European productivity was 200 % above that of 1938 – an astonishing success that would have significant long range implications.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

A significant component in the containment of Communism was created in April 1949.  Meeting in Washington, ten European states joined with the United States and Canada in forming a mutually defensive alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Ever since 1945 it had become increasingly evident that the Soviet policy in Europe was becoming more threatening.  By the end of 1947 most of Eastern Europe was under Soviet domination.  Western European economic recovery was sluggish at best and Communist parties held widespread popular support in several countries.  The US had announced the Marshall Plan but Congress had not yet voted the funding to pay for it.  The Truman Doctrine was being applied in Greece to contain the spread of Communism.  On the other side of the globe, Communist revolutionaries were winning a civil war for control of China.  In February 1948 a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia brought that country firmly into the Soviet sphere of influence.  From the perspective of the US and Western Europe, the Soviet threat required some sort of collective security.  The Europeans would act first.

         In 1948, citing the threat of Soviet ambitions, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg announced the formation of the Brussels Pact, a mutual defense alliance.  Each member state pledged to come to the assistance of any other member country attacked by the Soviet Union.  That same month US President Harry Truman, in a dramatic message to Congress, called the Soviet Union "a growing menace … to the very survival of freedom" and appealed for congressional approval of the Marshall Plan.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff (the US military high command) advised Truman that the defense of Europe from Soviet attack would require American troop strength equal to that at the height of US involvement in World War Two, something the US could not possibly do alone. The understanding among strategists was clear: a Western alliance - including Germany - would be essential to US interests and security.   In June US Senator Arthur Vandenberg presented a resolution before the Senate calling for the US to participate in "the progressive development of regional and other collective arrangements."  The Vandenberg Resolution was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate giving the Truman administration the "go-ahead" to seek a new alliance system.  That same month the Soviet blockade of West Berlin began.  In July, on the background of the Berlin Airlift, Truman dispatched two groups of B-29 bombers to bases in Britain as a demonstration of US and Allied resolve to stand firm in the crisis.  The bombers would also serve as a precedent for a US military peacetime presence in Europe.  In his inaugural address in January 1949, Truman, announced that the US would seek a North Atlantic defense pact. In April 1949, the treaty forming NATO was signed in Washington.

            The original NATO signatories were the US, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Iceland, and Canada.  The alliance pledged all signatories to the collective defense of any one member if attacked by an outside aggressor. (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for the "attack-on-one-is-an-attack-on-all" commitment.)  The treaty would remain in effect for 20 years and would be renewable.  (It has since been renewed twice and remains in effect today.)  New members could be admitted.[1]  It was agreed that NATO would be headquartered in Paris.[2]

              NATO’s formation was not without controversy.  European states were concerned that mutual defense could be very costly and detrimental to their economic recovery.  The prospect of West German rearmament was also disturbing, especially to France. In the US, where the treaty would not become law until approved by the Senate,  concerns centered on such questions as: was the US to become the "world's policeman”?   Why not rely on the UN?  Would the alliance permanently divide Europe? What was the substance of US military guarantees to alliance partners? Were US troops to be sent to Europe? Was West Germany going to be rearmed?   Critics of the treaty found plenty to challenge. NATO was not an "Atlantic" alliance (Italy was not on the Atlantic). NATO protected governments that were not democracies (Portugal was fascist). NATO was not an alliance among equals. (The US was not going to share control of its atomic weapons with its partners.) NATO would enable German rearmament.  NATO weighted US foreign policy too heavily to Europe at the expense of other global regions of American interest and concern.  NATO would antagonize the USSR and set off an arms race. NATO would give the US President the power to commit US forces without congressional approval. Despite these concerns the treaty was ratified by the Senate and subsequently by all of its founding members.

            The idea of collective security in time of peace was new to the United States and, with the Marshall Plan, broadened American strategic interests on an unprecedented level.  Membership in NATO meant American involvement in an "entangling alliance,” something George Washington had warned the country against back in 1797.  American security would henceforth be affected by the European balance of power.  And, the US would be committed to a period of at least 20 years to support of foreign governments and social structures.  Nonetheless, NATO was viewed as vital to American security and a major deterrent to any future Soviet aggression in Europe. 

         With approval of NATO, Truman presented Congress with proposed legislation calling for $1.5 billion to assist the European allies develop their military strength.  The Mutual Defense Assistance bill set off a storm of congressional reaction.  Some saw it as too weak to enable the allies to raise defenses to levels realistic enough to deter a Soviet attack.  Others saw it as simply a down payment to a long-term military commitment that would cause the Soviets to increase their own military development.  Many felt that all that was necessary for the American defense of Europe would be US air bases in Allied countries.   The debate quickly ended with the news in September that the USSR had successfully tested its own atomic bomb.  Congress, alarmed and desperate to respond to the escalated Soviet threat, passed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act.  The precedent was thus set for military assistance as a major component in the conduct of US Cold War foreign policy.

            When West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955, the Soviets responded by founding their own alliance, the Warsaw Pact.  From the Soviet perspective, the idea of a sovereign West Germany able to rearm was frightening.  As was NATO, the Warsaw Pact was a mutually defensive alliance wherein an attack on one member state would be regarded as an attack on them all.  The presence of some two million Soviet soldiers in Eastern Europe would, consequently, be continued under the justification of mutual protection.  The original members of the Warsaw Pact included the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.  (In 1961 Albania withdrew from the alliance because of an ideological dispute with the USSR.)

            Did NATO work?  While there were occasional crises that threatened European stability between 1945 and 1990, there was no war.  Both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union continued to plan and arm themselves in preparedness for a conflict that neither side wanted. While NATO could be considered a major factor in deterring another major war, both sides came to accept the reality of a divided Europe. By 1960 it was evident that the Western Allies would not interfere with Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe.  The Soviets recognized that Western Europe was in the “American Bloc.”  The West was well-armed and, because of NATO, under the protection of the US, thus it was not in Soviet interest to seek military expansion in Western Europe.  One cannot say what the situation might have been had NATO not existed, so, in that sense, it did work. Communism in Europe would remain contained.

                                                                       NATO in Europe 2023

                                                                                                     (Sweden was admitted in 2024.)

           Evolution of NATO membership since 1949

            Now that the Cold War is over and many former Communist countries belong to the alliance, why does NATO still exist?  In the 1990s the NATO membership decided to redirect the alliance to an active political agenda and peacekeeping role.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its breakup into some 15 independent states (seven of them in Europe) and the breakup (Balkanization) of Yugoslavia into five states, Europe became much more politically complex and potentially unstable than had been the case prior to 1989.  In 1993 NATO made overtures to Russia and other former Communist counties to participate in a “Partnership for Peace,” whereby the former antagonists could work together to maintain a peaceful Europe.  Through the Partnership the members share military information, participate in joint military training exercises, and cooperate in peacekeeping missions. 

           In 1991- 1992 the Balkan region exploded in warfare as Yugoslavia used armed force to try to prevent the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Once Yugoslavia accepted the loss of these territories (1992), the region remained chaotic and bloody as ethnic warfare ravaged Bosnia-Herzegovina.  In 1995 following some three years of brutal civil war in Bosnia, peace was brokered by the US.  The conditions of peace called for a multination NATO peacekeeping presence to oversee restoration of stability in Bosnia.  NATO forces remained in Bosnia until 2012.

            In 1999 NATO went to war for the first time in its history.  In response to Yugoslavia’s attempt to purge the Yugoslav province of Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population, US-led NATO forces launched a three-month air war against Yugoslavia.  Yugoslavia agreed to peace, and a large NATO peace-keeping force occupied Kosovo until 2008.

            In 2003 NATO assumed its first peacekeeping presence outside of Europe by assuming control of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. 

            In 2004 NATO personnel were sent to Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in the training of Iraqi security forces.

            In 2008 Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. While other countries have recognized Kosovo's independence, Serbia does not. 

            In 2009 France announced that it would resume its role in the military council of NATO. France withdrew from the military council in 1966 but still retained its NATO membership.

            In 2009 NATO warships took up patrol along the coasts of the Horn of Africa to protect merchant shipping from attacks by Somali pirates.

            In 2011 NATO formed the core of an multi-national military effort to protect Libyan insurgents in their war against the dictatorial and abusive government of Muammar Ghaddafy.  With the sanction of the UN and Arab League, NATO's role was limited to airstrikes, intelligence gathering, and interdicting arms shipments to the pro-Ghaddafy forces.  The insurgents were successful in overthrowing the Ghaddafy regime.

            In 2022 the Russian invasion and resulting war with Ukraine brought NATO into active involvement with many of the allied countries providing arms and logistical assistance to Ukraine.  None of the NATO allies, however, are providing combat troops. As most NATO states are in Europe, they likewise hold membership in the European Union which has acted to sanction trade with Russia, compounding the crisis on a wider scale.  Both Finland and Sweden, traditionally neutral, sought NATO membership.  Finland was admitted in 2023. Sweden was admitted in 2024.  The most serious international crisis to affect Europe since World War Two, the war has challenged NATO's role in facing an increasingly hostile Russia. The war is the subject of Chapter 31. 

 Today (2025) NATO has 32 members. 

Albania (2009), Belgium (1949), Britain (1949), Bulgaria (2004), Canada (1949), Croatia (2009), Czech Republic (1999), Denmark (1949), Estonia (2004), Finland (2023), France (1949), Germany (1955), Greece (1952), Hungary (1999), Iceland (1949), Italy (1949), Latvia, (2004), Lithuania (2004), Luxembourg (1949), Montenegro (2017), Netherlands (1949), North Macedonia (2020), Norway (1949), Poland (1999), Portugal (1949), Romania (2004), Slovakia (2004), Slovenia (2004), Spain (1949), Sweden (2024), Turkey (1952), United States (1949).

Sources for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Ambrose, Stephen. Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War. New York: Penguin, 2005.

Ganley, Albert C. et al. After Hiroshima. New York: Longman, 1985.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization website:  www.nato.int.

Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.

Paterson, Thomas et al. American Foreign Policy: A History since 1900. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1991.

The 2006 World Almanac and Book of Facts. New York: WRC Media, 2005.

[1] Today (2021), NATO has 28 members.  Later NATO admissions included Greece (1952), Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955), and Spain (1981).  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, NATO expanded considerably as former Soviet states and satellites joined the alliance. In 1999 Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined the alliance.  Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009. 

[2]  In 1966 France withdrew from NATO’s military command (although it still retained its alliance membership) and the headquarters were relocated to Brussels, Belgium. France returned to the NATO command in 2009. 

National Security Journal

May 14, 2025

NATO, in its current form, is depicted as a "corpse," its strategic effectiveness undermined by decades of European defense underfunding ("free-riding") and US strategic overstretch.

-Most member states fail to meet spending commitments, rendering the alliance a hollow shell, a reality starkly exposed by the war in Ukraine where the US carries the primary burden.

President Trump's approach is seen not as the cause of NATO's decline but as a catalyst for a necessary reckoning, forcing Europe to confront its defense responsibilities.

-A fundamental reset towards a European-led security framework, with US support rather than dominance, is essential for future relevance.

The Fall of NATO

NATO is a corpse. All that remains is the grotesque performance art of a diplomatic zombie stumbling from summit to summit, mouthing tired clichés about “shared values” and “burden sharing,” even as its core strategic logic lies rotting beneath the surface. The Atlantic Alliance, once the steel scaffolding of Western security, has become a hollow ritual. Its military readiness is an illusion. Its political cohesion is fraying. Its future, if it has one, lies not in revival—but in reinvention or replacement.

This is not a triumphalist declaration from the Kremlin or Beijing. It is a sober diagnosis, grounded in realism and restraint. And it should be a wake-up call in Washington, Ottawa, Berlin, and beyond.

NATO’s death was not caused by Donald Trump, though he may soon become its undertaker. Nor was it caused by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, though that war has exposed the Alliance’s hollowness in ways no war game or communique ever could. The real cause lies in decades of European free-riding, American strategic drift, and a foundational lie at the heart of the Alliance: the idea that an empire can masquerade as a collective defense pact without consequences.

Let’s start with the numbers. Most NATO members still do not meet the 2 percent of GDP defense spending benchmark, despite years of promises and performative panic. Canada, which has taken freeloading to an art form, has shown no serious intention of meeting its obligations. As I’ve written elsewhere, Trudeau’s empty pledges mask a decaying defense industrial base, a stagnant recruiting system, and an Arctic strategy made of snow and sentiment.

Germany—the economic motor of Europe—still can’t field a combat-ready army for more than a few weeks at a time. The Bundeswehr is a shell. Its special fund is already mostly spent, and its political class remains addicted to strategic ambiguity and military minimalism. France wants “strategic autonomy” but lacks the scale and will to lead Europe alone. Poland, despite its impressive rearmament, cannot carry the continent’s defense burden on its shoulders—certainly not while Berlin dithers and Washington increasingly looks west, not east.

Meanwhile, the United States—still NATO’s military backbone—faces a fiscal cliff, a recruitment crisis, and an overstretched force posture. The era of limitless resources is over. American global primacy has ended. Multipolarity has arrived. The U.S. must now prioritize. And that means making hard choices about where its forces are truly needed—and where others must finally step up or face the consequences.

The war in Ukraine has laid these contradictions bare. NATO as an institution is not fighting the war. The United States is. Some European countries are helping—but most are hedging. NATO has been bypassed in favor of bilateral and ad hoc coalitions. Article 5 hasn’t been tested, and it may never be. The idea that NATO is “more united than ever” is a comforting fiction, trotted out to conceal the fact that the Alliance can no longer mount a serious, conventional defense of Europe without massive and prolonged American escalation.

Even the so-called Nordic expansion—Sweden and Finland joining NATO—has not changed the equation. It’s a strategic sideshow. Unless Europe can build up a credible, conventional deterrent in the East, without expecting Washington to always bail it out, the Alliance will remain a Potemkin village: flags, acronyms, and summits without substance.

Trump’s likely return to the White House in 2025 should not be viewed as a cataclysm but as an overdue reckoning. He will not end NATO. He will force Europe to decide whether it is willing to pay for its own defense or not. He will not blow up the Alliance. He will make it answer for its contradictions. And that, frankly, is what a serious ally should do.

Some critics will scream that this is the death knell of the “rules-based international order.” But the order they mourn was already breaking down—long before Trump, long before Ukraine, long before Brexit or Crimea. What we are witnessing is not a collapse but a transition: from the illusion of Atlanticism to the reality of multipolarity. And NATO, if it is to matter at all in this new world, must either become a true European-led military alliance with American support—or fade into history like SEATO and CENTO before it.

This doesn’t mean abandoning Europe to Russian domination. It means telling uncomfortable truths. Europe is rich. Europe is populous. Europe is not helpless. The United States can and should support its European allies—but it should not subsidize their illusions indefinitely. A more self-reliant Europe is not a threat to American interests; it is a precondition for strategic focus on the North Pacific, the Arctic, and the Western Hemisphere—where the real contests of the 21st century will be decided.

n my writing here and elsewhere, I have repeatedly argued that Canada must stop pretending it is a global power and start acting like what it is: a North Pacific, Arctic, and North Atlantic state. That means prioritizing regional defense, rebuilding naval and aerospace capabilities, and getting serious about continental defense. NATO is not the vehicle for that anymore—if it ever was. For Canada, continuing to hide behind NATO rhetoric while failing to meet even the most basic obligations is not only cowardly—it is dangerous.

A dead NATO still carries risks. Strategic ambiguity, brittle expectations, and performative deterrence are a recipe for miscalculation. The Alliance’s political leadership must either acknowledge the need for transformation or risk a future crisis that reveals, in real time and in blood, what we already know: that the emperor has no tanks.

The solution is not sentimental nostalgia. It is clear-eyed realism. NATO in its current form is not worth saving. But its core idea—collective defense among likeminded powers—still has value. What’s needed is a reset: a reimagined Euro-Atlantic security framework led by capable European states, with American support but not American dominance. A NATO that deters by capability, not by assumption. A NATO that can say no as well as yes. A NATO, in short, that lives in the real world.

The alternative is strategic decay. A slow slide into irrelevance. More summits, more selfies, more hollow communiqués. Until, one day, NATO doesn’t die with a bang—but with a bureaucratic whimper.

That future is already here. NATO is dead. The only question now is what comes next—and whether we have the courage to build it.

Author: Andrew Latham, Ph.D., a tenured professor at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is also a Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa and a non-resident fellow with Defense Priorities, a think tank in Washington, DC.