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On Sept. 12, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) declared that, for the first time in its history, the alliance would invoke Article V of its founding treaty. The article holds that, under specific circumstances, an attack on any of the member states in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. In doing so, the alliance invoked an irony unforeseen by NATO's founding members. Article V was designed to anticipate a threat that never emerged — an attack on Europe — but it was finally invoked to meet a threat that no one anticipated — an attack on the United States.
The initiative for NATO's creation came from European governments concerned with what they perceived to be overwhelming Soviet conventional military superiority. In the late 1940s, it was held that Russian forces possessed the means to sweep west to the English Channel in a matter of weeks. Thus it was that Britain, France, and the Benelux nations sought to link their defense to that of the United States and Canada. In 1948, these nations agreed to a framework that provided the basis for Article V. At the time, the United States still hoped to build up Western Europe's independent military capabilities and minimize the presence of U.S. forces on the continent. But given the state of Western Europe's military capabilities, the pace of economic recovery, and European insecurities, these goals would necessarily be long-term. Thus on April 4, 1949, the United States formally committed to defend Europe in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and NATO was born. In its final form, Article V states:
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"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them…will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."
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Implicit in Article 5 at its creation was the logic of the United States as guarantor of Western Europe's security. Indeed, it was the linchpin of the alliance. As the momentum of the Cold War built, the alliance would come to play a prominent role in U.S. policy. While the United States sought to contain Soviet expansive tendencies worldwide, Article V ensured the credibility of mutual defense of Europe. A sizable U.S. conventional force on the continent helped marry European security with that of North America. In theory, with so many U.S. troops on the ground in Europe, an attack on Berlin would be tantamount to an attack on Chicago.
Until the end of the Cold War then, National Security from the European standpoint provided little room for the use of military force outside the confines of NATO's territory. The diminishing of the eastern threat helped to de-emphasize Article V as the heart of the NATO alliance: stability replaced deterrence as the salient theme. Europe began to cautiously move toward autonomy in decision-making on security issues but this process was twice interrupted by conflicts in the Balkans. In Bosnia as in Kosovo, Europe's failure to assert itself necessitated heavy U.S. military presence. Fifty-two years after NATO's founding, the dependency that had long defined the alliance had shown little sign of change — that is, until the events of Sept. 11.
No act symbolizes the new dynamic in NATO relations better than the deployment of the alliance's fleet of Airborne Early Warning and Control (AWACS) aircraft in defense of the United States. Five of NATO's 17 AWACS aircraft are being deployed to help coordinate combat air patrols that have become a feature of the skies over American cities after Sept. 11. The deployment helps ease the operational strain on U.S. AWACS aircraft, and frees America's own airborne command and control aircraft for operations in the Middle East.
For the first time in recent history of the United States, non-American troops and equipment defend U.S. homeland. In fact, the ownership of NATO's AWACS fleet is a little more complicated — the aircraft, essentially a Boeing 707 with a large radar dome and loaded with communications equipment, are among the few assets actually owned jointly by NATO (or, in this case, 13 of NATO's 19 allies). The alliance otherwise relies on troops and equipment contributions from individual member states for its operations. NATO's AWACS aircraft, also known as E-3A, are manned by multinational crews from 12 countries including, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Turkey. The headquarters of NATO's E-3A force are in Geilenkirchen, Germany, but the aircraft also operate out of bases in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Norway. The deployment pattern was designed to cover Europe's eastern border from north to south in the event of a Soviet attack — no one in NATO at the time of the E-3A force's conception in 1978 thought the aircraft could once be deployed in defense of the United States.
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