Do you agree with the view that the formation of NATO marked a revolution in American attitude to the world problems?

Answer:

The North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 committed the United States to a permanent peacetime military alliance in Europe. Measured against the tradition of avoiding entangling alliances that had governed American policy since Washington, this was indeed a revolutionary departure.

The tradition it broke

• Washington's Farewell Address had warned against permanent alliances with foreign powers.
• The Monroe Doctrine confined American concern largely to the western hemisphere.
• The Senate had refused to join the League of Nations after the First World War.
• Isolationism dominated the inter-war years.

Why NATO was revolutionary

• It was the first peacetime military alliance the United States had ever entered.
• Article 5 pledged that an attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all.
• American troops remained stationed permanently in Europe.
• It institutionalised the containment doctrine announced in the Truman Doctrine of 1947.
• It followed the Marshall Plan in binding America economically and militarily to Europe.

A qualifying view

• The shift had begun earlier with Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter and wartime involvement.
• Interventions in Latin America showed America had never been wholly isolationist.
• The Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 made the change appear a necessity rather than a choice.

One may therefore agree substantially with the view. NATO marked the decisive abandonment of the isolationist tradition and the assumption by the United States of a permanent global role. As historians observe, the revolution was one of commitment and permanence rather than of sudden awakening, since the war years had already begun the transformation.