Forming of the collective defence in Europe
In the early decades of the 20. century a number of attempts to creating a functional international defence mechanism failed. The most well known was the failure of the League of Nations (LN) This international establishment arosed in the year 1919 as a result on events during the WWI and as a hopeful prevention against this kind of tragedy.
The basic document – Pact of LN was set on peaceful solving of conflicts between the countries, reduction of weapon production, open diplomacy and pacifism. The LN counted 54 members, but in the last years before the starting of the WWII resigned on their membership some countries: Japan (1933), Germany and Italy (1937) and USSR (1939). The League of Nations could not prevent the conflicts in the 30´s (civil war in Spain, Chalkin Gola conflict) and it failed also in preventing the WWII and maybe that’s why was its actions stopped by the start of 1940. Formal was the LN dismissed in the 1946, from its core raised United Nations (UN). The main document of the UN – Chart was signed by the creating members (which were the “winners” of the WWII) on the 26th of June 1945. UN had grouped only about 50 members, today is it above 200. The activities of UN are quite controversal, because lot of the members do not accept the Chart or its authority. The chart of UN is a base for many safekeeping organisations with regional effect (NATO, Westeuropean union, OSCE). NATO
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) was established by signing the Washington Declaration containing the collective defense on the April 4th 1949. This declaration was signed by ten westeuropean countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Island, Luxenbourg, Norway, Portugal, Italy and Great Britain) and two northamerican countries (USA, Canada). In the year 1952 entered the NATO two more members – Greece and Turkey, in 1955 West Germany and in 1982 Spain. After the political changes in eastern Europe, after a longer reorganisation of their armed forces acceded Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic joined their ranks.
The primary agreement (Washington Declaration) contains of 10 articles, the majority of the articles speaks about general characteristics. The preamble speaks about the need to “protecting the freedom, parcenary and culture of its nations” what should be based on democracy, enactments and decrees.