paths that were rejected or excluded from the outset. What is clear is that at the time of the debates over the out-of-area role of the Bundeswehr, there was no question but that Bundeswehr action would be undertaken within a collective framework, whether of the UN, the OSCE or NATO. Likewise there was no real questioning among the political elite as to the continuance of NATO membership – earlier consideration of this by some SPD politicians was dubbed an ‘abortive debate’.5 Any moves towards a re-nationalisation of German military force was totally excluded, as was
informal arrangements from 1950 onwards providing for the exchange of technical information on weapons systems. 37 Britain and the United States were leading members of the NATO alliance, centred on the defence of Western Europe. In 1962, Britain had over 50,000 troops stationed in Germany in the form of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). It has been pointed out that London had resisted making major cutbacks to the BAOR partly on the grounds that to
Treaty Organisation (NATO) The Atlantic Alliance was established on the basis of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty to provide common security for its members through co-operation in military, political and economic matters. The objectives of the Alliance are implemented by NATO, based in Brussels. The twelve founding members in 1949 were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the
It has been said that Turkey’s participation in the Korean War in the 1950s bought it the entrance ticket into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Forty years later, in 1991, Turkey participated in the Gulf War. Not a single Turkish soldier crossed the Iraqi–Turkish border, yet the six or so Turkish divisions that were deployed along the border drew off Iraqi forces from the Kuwaiti battlefield. This was meant by Turkey’s late President, Torgut Ozal, to pave the way towards his country’s accession into the European Union (EU). Was
signalled the onset of tension. In 1947, the Truman Doctrine, the domino theory, the rise of McCarthyism and the Marshall Plan paved the way for the first major geopolitical confrontation: the 1948 Berlin crisis. Although a war was barely averted, the crisis added to the intensification of the Cold War. The following year, NATO would be created to counter the perceived Soviet threat. 4
, ethnic Albanians became almost entirely absent from formal judicial and security structures. The police force and the judiciary in Kosovo became dominated ethnically and politically by Serbs and the Serbian government, leading ethnic Albanians to view these institutions as tools of oppression. The NATO bombing in 1999 led to a nearly complete withdrawal of Serbian personnel from RoL institutions and many of the buildings that housed legal and security actors were left demolished by the fighting. NATO’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) played an important, although
period after World War II was very much prepared to ‘go it alone’ at least in the economic sense. They were ready to accept American aid for reconstruction (the ‘Marshall Plan’) and to join NATO for collective security after the onset of the Cold War, but the economic situation was different. There was to be no permanent economic union with the United States as the latter would be too dominant. If an integrated political union was proposed they feared it would be British dominated. So the development of a European Community was, therefore, very much a west European
its first eight months in office had been unilateralist in its approach to international issues, embraced a multilateral approach to security that also harkened back to the Cold War. With NATO invoking Article 5 for the first time in its history, the European allies provided enormous diplomatic and law enforcement support to the United States – especially in the immediate aftermath of September 11. Subsequently, the United States military response in Afghanistan created some unease in western Europe, which was exacerbated by the ‘axis of evil’ reference in the
depicted European integration as a subjugation mechanism mainly serving US interests – ‘the EEC and NATO are the same barracks’, to translate freely a slogan of that times. Given that after the fall of the Colonels’ regime in the mid-1970s, there was important anti-American sentiment in Greece, Europe was consequently tainted by the same negative feelings. Moreover, power in the European Communities was perceived as residing in an excluding ‘directorate’ that was to be impervious to the needs of a small country like Greece. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the
have the ability to do this.8 The real test for Callaghan, though, was to convince the Ford administration to use its influence to assist the UK. Callaghan therefore sought to convince Washington that the IMF’s economic reasoning behind such a large PSBR reduction was flawed. The prime minister, however, had a contingency plan which involved Britain’s security commitments to the Western alliance acting as a sort of ‘bargaining chip’. In essence, Britain’s nuclear deterrent, its contribution to NATO’s conventional forces and its intelligence facilities would all be