Canada and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

CANADA REMEMBERS

CANADA AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION

One of the Canadian military’s central roles over the international community, its power to curb the years has been to stand side-by-side with our allies escalating Cold War was limited. Dramatic episodes, to help defend international peace and security. The like the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, helped stoke North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was the fires of distrust and the countries of Western established in 1949, and this important partnership Europe and North America increasingly felt the has endured for decades in a world that has undergone need to band together to try to counterbalance the many significant changes. communist threat.

THE COLD WAR NATO was established on April 4, 1949, with the The origins of NATO date back to the tumultuous signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, years that followed the end of the Second World War D.C. This political and military alliance was formed in 1945. While the Soviet Union had been a major to protect the freedom of its citizens and uphold the Allied power during the conflict, tensions quickly principles of democracy and the rule of law. Canada arose between the communist Soviet regime—which played a prominent role in NATO’s creation and was sought to widen its global influence—and democratic one of its 12 charter members, along with the United nations of the west like the United States, United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Denmark, Kingdom, France and Canada. Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal. The “iron curtain” soon descended across Central Europe as the nations that had been freed from CANADA RESPONDS German occupation by Soviet forces saw communist Canada had greatly downsized its military governments take power. The clashing ideologies of immediately after the Second World War. However, east and west uneasily faced one another across a the emergence of the Cold War and the outbreak of heavily armed frontier. The development of highly the Korean War in 1950 (which saw the communist destructive nuclear weapons during this period caused forces of the north invade the democratic south) the stakes of a future conflict to rise exponentially. alarmed our government. Canada would soon recruit This decades-long international standoff spawned in thousands of new soldiers, sailors and airmen to the latter half of the 1940s came to be known as the defend our own borders and also serve in Europe Cold War. and on the Atlantic Ocean as part of NATO forces. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of Canadians THE BIRTH OF NATO would take part in our country’s Cold War efforts The United Nations was established in 1945 but, between the late 1940s and the early 1990s.

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