Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

1/ Day 1 of #NATO7for70 to commemorate 70 years of @NATO!

The first installment is "The Signing: Negotiating the North Atlantic Treaty"

2/ Fun fact: the band at the April 4, 1949 signing ceremony in Washington opened the proceedings by playing "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" & "It Ain't Necessarily So" from Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess".

Were those chosen to express American sentiment about the Treaty? 🤷‍♂️

3/ While it's too much to discuss the underlying motivations for creating an Atlantic alliance in 1948, the initial proposal came from Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Minister

4/ US Secretary of State George Marshall, though initially hesitant, eventually agreed to at least begin talking about the idea

5/ This led to the secret ABC talks in the spring of 1948.

A = American 🇺🇸
B = British 🇬🇧
C = Canadian 🇨🇦

Including the Canadians was critical for convincing the Americans that the "arrangement" would be an "Atlantic" one, not just "European"

6/ A preliminary framework was agreed upon at these talks. They accomplished two things:

1) The Americans were convinced to pursue a treaty, not simply a "unilateral declaration" of American intent.

2) They decided to invite a few other countries to join the summer talks

7/ The Summer Talks were called the "Washington Exploratory Talks", held at the Pentagon

8/ The participants were the original three (🇺🇸🇬🇧🇨🇦) + Belgium (🇧🇪), France (🇫🇷), Netherlands (🇳🇱), and Luxembourg (🇱🇺).

These countries were the other members (along with the UK) of the "Brussels Pact" signed in the spring (to guard against future German aggression)

9/ The talks addressed a host of issues, but two were most important:

1) Phrasing of the "mutual defense" clause

2) Membership, meaning the definition of "North Atlantic"

10/ The phrasing of the "mutual defense" clause consumed quite a bit of time, primarily because the parties knew it had to be done to 🇺🇸 liking.

Ultimately, they chose phrasing similar to the equivalent clause (Art 3) in the 1947 Rio Pact (already signed by the US)

11/ As for membership, this was more contentious.

A big sticking point (so much so that the parties kept delaying making a final decision) was the status of Italy (🇮🇹)

Recall, the parties had just fought Italy during WWII. Also, Italy was disarmed as condition of the peace.

12/ 🇫🇷wanted 🇮🇹in, but 🇺🇸& 🇬🇧did not.

A compromise was reached by linking 🇮🇹 membership to Norway (🇳🇴) membership.

Both 🇺🇸& 🇬🇧wanted 🇳🇴 in, but 🇫🇷said that would make the pact "Arctic", not "Atlantic".

Including 🇮🇹brought geographic balance.

13/ The final sticking point, and the one that darn near ended the whole negotiation, was 🇫🇷position on including Algeria (at the time, part of France)

14/ 🇫🇷said that not including Algeria would be equivalent to not covering Florida.

For 🇫🇷: No Algeria, No Treaty.

Ultimately, the new US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, convinced American Senators that including Algeria was appropriate. That led to this clause

15/ Speaking of Acheson, while he might have been "Present at the Creation", he actually didn't do a whole lot to bring it about

amazon.com/Present-Creati…

16/ With those issues addressed, the treaty was finalized and signed on April 4.

Of course, not all issues were addressed. Most notably, the "O" part was nothing more than a clause on paper

17/ Still, the US was now committed to a peacetime alliance. No more "beware of entangling alliances"

(end)

Addendum: The installments of #NATO7for70 will move chronologically, rather than in order of "importance" (i.e. this list isn't a ranking).

Also, like @espn's "@30for30", I'll try to give each installment a nifty title! 😉