The NATO has been here for over 50 years. NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It’s history starts short after the second world war. This war has left the European continent a wasteland. Over 50 million displaced people, and waste material damage. The mood was one of despair and demoralization rather than the rebirth of spirit that the end of war might have been expected to produce. Communist parties in western Europe hoped use this desperation to try to take power. This threatened to extend westward the “iron curtain” the communists were bringing down over eastern and central Europe. To counter this expansion, the western European states had turned to the United States. Only America, they felt could provide the means to contain the Communism and assure the peaceful development of a unified Europe. In March 1948, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands had signed the Brussels treaty, a 50 year defensive alliance. This was meant to show the US that Europe was serious about their security and able to organize itself. But the isolationist tradition of the US seemed too strong to break. Then, in June 1984, the Soviet Union blocked allied access to the divided and occupied city of Berlin. This act focused American attention on a security pact that had been outlined by the British. The president of the united states at that time was Harry Truman. After tough negotiations, the Europeans were finally able to secure agreement to an alliance with the United States and Canada. This required the enlargement of the original group to include Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal. This allowed the US to call this alliance Atlantic rather than European. The pact added Turkey and Greece to the alliance in 1952. The agreement basically stated: “Each member country would treat an attack on another member country as an attack on themselves. The NATO countries believed that the Soviet Union would not attack Western Europe if such an attack would trigger war with the United States. So in general, NATO was a protective act, sort of a counter treaty to the Eastern Warsaw pact. It’s main goal was to discourage an attack. But a Soviet-supported North Korea invasion of South Korea in June 1950 quickly dispelled any illusions and energized the alliance on every level.