The North Atlantic Treaty, Military Assistance and the Troops to Europe Decision

Abstract

Although the American military presence has become a central feature of security arrangements in Europe, the United States in the late 1940s had no intention of making such a deployment. As late as 1948 an ‘entangling alliance’ with Western Europe was still regarded as ‘worse than original sin’.¹ The Truman Administration had committed itself to the economic recovery of Western Europe through Marshall Aid, but this was intended to restore an indigenous balance of power in Erope and thereby ensure that the United States did not become more directly involved.² Not only was the aid programme based on the principle of European self-help, it also anticipated that it would promote European self-reliance. The consequences for the United States, however, were very different from its intentions, and what had been regarded as the final stage in America’s European policy became merely an interim measure, as it became clear that the economic recovery programme was unlikely to come to fruition without steps to reassure Western Europe that its security would also be underwritten.