Nato’s unhappy birthday

Nato marks its 75th birthday today, but the alliance is in no mood for celebration. 

At its foundation, and for much of its lifetime, Nato worked well. On 4 April 1949, representatives of a dozen countries signed the North Atlantic treaty in Washington DC ‘to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’. Although the Cold War was not always cold, and flared into bloodily hot conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola among other places, there was never a face-to-face showdown between Nato and members of the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact, let alone a nuclear one.

Following the end of the Cold War, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nato expanded into eastern Europe into two major waves, in 1999 and 2004. The alliance saw itself as an insurance policy for newly established democracies.