Formed in 1949 in response to the onset of the Cold War, the purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to British General Hastings Lionel Ismay, the first Secretary General of the alliance, was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Sixty-five years after the creation of NATO, little it seems has changed with the exception...
World Order, Henry Kissinger muses in his eponymous book, requires somebody—a state or an institution—to maintain it. He holds up the Westphalian System, put in place after the murderous Thirty Years’ War, as one institutional pillar. As another instance, he cites the Congress of Vienna (1815), which spawned the Quadruple as well as the Holy Alliance.
NATO’s character and mission were clearly delineated at its inception. Its mission was to countervail Soviet military power, specifically an attack on Western Europe. The fixed focus was the Fulda Gap.
