NATO marks its seventy-fifth birthday today, but the alliance is in no mood for celebration.
At its foundation, and for much of its lifetime, NATO worked well. On April 4, 1949, representatives of a dozen countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” Although the Cold War was not always cold, and flared into bloodily hot conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola among other places, there was never a face-to-face showdown between NATO and members of the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact, let alone a nuclear one.
