Treaty of Brussels

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This article is on the 1948 treaty, which served as a basis for the Western European Union. Some see it as the basis of NATO, set up by the North Atlantic Treaty a year later. For the treaty in 1516, refer to War of the League of Cambrai

[edit] A Western European Union

Signed on March 17, 1948 between Belgium, Britain, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, as an expansion to the previous year's defence pledge, the Dunkirk Treaty, signed between Britain and France.

The Treaty of Brussels created the Western European Union, a defence pact (not to be confused with the European Union.) The Treaty was aimed primarily at defending against possible German rearmament.

In that it was an effort towards European post-war security cooperation, the Brussels Pact was a precursor to NATO and similar to it in the sense that it promised European mutual defence. However it greatly differed from NATO in that it envisaged a purely European mutual defence pact primarily against Germany, whereas NATO took shape the next year, on the recognition that Europe was unavoidably divided into two opposing blocks (western and communist), that the USSR was a much greater threat than the possibility of a resurgent Germany, and that western European mutual defence would have to be atlantacist (i.e. including North America).

The Pact featured cultural and social clauses, concepts for the setting up of a 'Consultative Council'. The basis for this was that a cooperation between Western nations would help stop the spread of Communism. The Treaty of Brussels was amended by the Protocol signed at Paris on 23 October 1954, which added West Germany and Italy to the WEU.

[edit] NATO

When the division of Europe into two opposing camps became unavoidable, the threat of the USSR and Eastern Bloc became much more important than the threat of German rearmament.

Western Europe therefore sought a new mutual defence pact involving the United States, a powerful military force for such an alliance. The United States, recognising the growing threat of the USSR, was responsive to this idea.

There was therefore rapid progress on this idea, and secret meetings had already begun by the end of March, where American, Canadian and British officials negotiated over the concept. Eventually, it would lead to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation by the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington D.C. in 1949.

[edit] External links

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