NATO – a social democratic concept?

Describing NATO, officially founded in 1949, as a social democratic invention is likely to raise eyebrows – especially in Germany. For Social Democrats, the creation of a military alliance is hard to reconcile with their party’s long-standing commitment to peace, while conservatives have traditionally viewed the military defence of the homeland as their own political domain.

The founding principle

The initial idea for NATO can be traced back to the Norwegian Social Democrat Trygve Lie. In 1940, during the German occupation of Norway, Lie was part of the government-in-exile in London and approached the British Foreign Office with a proposal for a European defence alliance. His aim was to ensure protection from German imperialism beyond the end of the war. Lie's proposal was well received. Given the wartime context, Lie and the others involved in the proposal saw it as self-evident that such an alliance would only be feasible with US support.

After 1945, however, the perceived threat shifted. Fear of a Soviet attack on Western Europe increased, and the British government – now under the Labour leadership of Clement Attlee – intensified its efforts to turn the idea of a defence alliance into reality. In March 1947, Attlee succeeded in securing a bilateral defence agreement with French socialist interim Prime Minister Léon Blum: the Treaty of Dunkirk. A year later, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium joined the alliance (Brussels Pact), laying the foundation for NATO – though the United States was not yet on board.

Getting the United States on board

At the time, both American public opinion and political leadership was still largely opposed to a long-term military commitment in Europe. The preferred means of securing transatlantic ties was economic – primarily through the Marshall Plan. The US was particularly resistant to any automatic obligation to provide military support, as set down in the Brussels Pact. However, two key events shifted the mood: the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 and the Soviet blockade of Berlin in June of the same year. In response, negotiations on the content of the mutual defence pact began in the summer of 1948. The United States insisted that any mutual defence commitments be anchored in the UN Charter – a condition stipulated by Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg in a resolution passed by the US Senate in June 1948. Still, the US remained opposed to including an automatic trigger for military intervention. Further complications arose when France demanded the immediate deployment of US troops on French soil. The UK meanwhile exerted pressure on France to moderate its stance while simultaneously working to keep the US on board. The final wording of  Article 5 of the NATO Treaty reflected a carefully negotiated compromise that balanced competing interests: first, military assistance was tied to the right to self-defence as defined in the UN Charter (Article 51); second, support for the country under attack explicitly included the “use of armed force” – a key demand from the European partners; third, each member state would take only such action as it “deem[ed] necessary“, thus avoiding any binding, automatic commitment to war – this last point was crucial for the Unites States.

Shortly before the treaty was finalised, France pushed for Italy be included to help secure the Mediterranean flank alongside the North Atlantic. The US responded by unilaterally inviting Denmark, Portugal and Iceland. Ultimately, twelve countries became NATO’s founding members: Canada, the signatories of the Brussels Pact (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK), Norway, Italy, the US, Portugal, Denmark and Iceland – forming a bloc that spanned the entire Atlantic coastline of Europe. Portugal’s strategic location, including its control of the Azores, was a crucial factor in its inclusion.

In 1949, however, NATO did not yet constitute a tight military alliance. Rather, it was initially a declaration of intent, formalised by a treaty. It was the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 that provided the decisive impetus to develop NATO’s own military structures.

NATO: a project of Western European social democracy

Not only did the idea for NATO originate in social democratic circles – social democratic governments also played a key role in its founding. Of the twelve founding members, six were governed either solely or jointly by social democratic or labour parties: Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In France, the presidency was held by Socialist Vincent Auriol, and in the United States, Democrat Harry S. Truman was in office. Only Canada, Italy and Luxembourg were led by liberal or conservative governments. Portugal, for its part, was under a dictatorship at the time.

The creation of NATO was by no means a matter of course. Europe and North America first had to reach consensus on the need for a joint defence against the Soviet Union. Social democrats, conservatives and liberals all joined forces to help make this happen. Yet it was social democratic and labour parties that played a pivotal role at key junctures: from Trygve Lie’s initial wartime proposal to the sustained efforts of the British Labour government after 1945 and the signing of the Dunkirk Treaty by the UK and France in 1947.

The SPD: from German scepticism...

In the aftermath of the Nazi dictatorship and World War II, pacifist positions initially dominated within the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Rearming the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany (1949) was unthinkable – even though the party had helped negotiate Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the German Basic Law, which states that no one may be forced to be drafted to military service against his conscience. The Korean War marked a turning point in security policy: SPD party leader Kurt Schumacher began to recognise the need for national defence.

Nevertheless, the SPD rejected both the founding of the Bundeswehr (the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany) in 1955 and West Germany’s accession to NATO. Social Democrats feared that alliance membership would entrench the East-West division and diminish hopes for reunification with the GDR. In the 1950s, German unification took precedence over European integration in the SPD’s political priorities.

Over the course of the decade, the SPD's outright rejection of NATO membership gave way to growing criticism of the alliance’s military strategy. One major concern was the 1957 adoption of the “massive retaliation” strategy, which called for a full-scale nuclear response to any Soviet attack – even a conventional one. In a real-world scenario, this would have made both West and East Germany the primary battleground in a nuclear war.

...to becoming a NATO thought leader

By the late 1950s, the SPD had begun to rethink its stance – prompted by the work of several prominent figures in the field of security policy. These included Fritz Erler, then deputy parliamentary leader; Friedrich Beermann, who coined the term “citizen in uniform” in 1952 and, in 1968, became the first Bundeswehr general affiliated with the SPD; and Helmut Schmidt, who would later become Chancellor of West Germany. 

At its party conference in November 1960, the SPD officially endorsed the Federal Republic’s NATO membership. Helmut Schmidt would go on to become the SPD’s leading strategic thinker on military matters and, from 1969 to 1972, served as the first Social Democratic Minister of Defence in the Federal Republic.