North Atlantic Treaty

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North Atlantic Treaty

North Atlantic Treaty authentication page

Type

Military Alliance

Signed

4 April 1949

Location

Washington, D.C.

Effective 24 August 1949

Ratification by Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Condition the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as by a majority of
the other signatory states.
Signatorie
s

28[show]

Depositar
Government of the United States of America
y
Languages French, English
North Atlantic Treaty at Wikisource
The North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949, is
the treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Background[edit]
The treaty was drafted by a committee in talks in Washington which was chaired
by Theodore Achilles. Earlier secret talks had been held at the Pentagon between 22
March and 1 April 1948, of which Achilles said:
The talks lasted about two weeks and by the time they finished, it had
been secretly agreed that there would be a treaty, and I had a draft of
one in the bottom drawer of my safe. It was never shown to anyone except
Jack [Hickerson]. I wish I had kept it, but when I left the Department in
1950, I dutifully left it in the safe and I have never been able to trace it in
the archives. It drew heavily on the Rio Treaty, and a bit of the Brussels
Treaty, which had not yet been signed, but of which we were being kept
heavily supplied with drafts. The eventual North Atlantic Treaty had the
general form, and a good bit of the language of my first draft, but with a
number of important differences.[1]
According to Achilles, another important author of the treaty was John D. Hickerson:
More than any human being Jack was responsible for the nature, content,
and form of the Treaty...It was a one-man Hickerson treaty.[2]
The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western
Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never invoked during the Cold
War. Rather, it was invoked for the first time in 2001 in response to the 11
September 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and The
Pentagon in Operation Eagle Assist.

Members[edit]
Founding members[edit]
The following twelve nations signed the treaty and thus became the founding
members of NATO. The following leaders signed the agreement
as plenipotentiaries of their countries in Washington D.C.:[3]

Map of NATO countries chronological membership.

Belgium Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak and

Ambassador Baron Robert Silvercruys
Canada Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson and
Ambassador H. H. Wrong
Denmark Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen and Ambassador Henrik de
Kauffmann
France Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and Ambassador Henri Bonnet
Iceland Foreign Minister Bjarni Benediktsson and Ambassador Thor Thors
Italy Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza and Ambassador Alberto Tarchiani
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Joseph Bech and Ambassador Hugues Le Gallais
Netherlands Foreign Minister Dirk Stikker and Ambassador Eelco van Kleffens
Norway Foreign Minister Halvard M. Lange and Ambassador Wilhelm von Munthe
af Morgenstierne
Portugal Foreign Minister Jos Caeiro da Mata and Ambassador Pedro Teotnio
Pereira
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and Ambassador Oliver Franks,
Baron Franks
United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson

Later members[edit]
The following 4 nations joined the treaty after the 12 founding countries:

Greece (1952)
Turkey (1952)
Federal Republic of
Germany (1955)