The North Atlantic Pact

• Author: Georg Schwarzenberger
• Published date: 01 September 1949
• DOI: 10.1177/106591294900200301
• Date: 01 September 1949
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE NORTH ATLANTIC PACT
GEORG SCHWARZENBERGER
University of London
"All the distinction ... is that our downright ancestors named the very
persons against whom the alliance was made, while the modern refine-
ments have confined it chiefly to quotas, and wrapt up the object in
general terms."
R. WARD, Foundation and History of the Law of Nations (1795).
HE
North Atlantic Pact is a confession and a response. It is a
t
confession of the constitutional inability of the United Nations to
achieve its avowed main purpose of maintaining world order. It is
a response to the insidious attempts of the Soviet Union to gain the fruits
of another major war by all measures short of open war with the Western
powers. Thus, more pronouncedly than any of the more tentative steps
hitherto taken by the Western powers, this multilateral treaty forcibly
symbolizes the new phase which post-war international relations have
entered.
THE PACT AND THE CHARTER
In accordance with a terminology which has become standard since
the inter-war period, the Treaty is couched in the language of a collective
system. The essence of a collective system, as distinct from alliances and
counter-alliances within a system of power politics is that it is directed
against an unknown aggressor. Every participant contracts against every-
one else, including itself, and suspects the good intentions of other con-
tracting parties as little as its own. Both the League of Nations and the
United Nations are based on this assumption, and the Locarno Treaties
were an attempt to realize the same principle on a regional scale.
In form the North Atlantic Pact complies with this requirement of a
collective system. The potential aggressor is not specifically named. In
fact, none of the parties to the Treaty is afraid of an armed attack,or of a
threat to its territorial integrity, political independence, or security from
any one of them. They all think of one country, and of one country only:
the Soviet Union. Thus, in reality the Treaty is a multilateral defensive
alliance against an outsider.
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The nucleus of the alliance is formed by the Atlantic powers, that is to
say, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, the Benelux coun-
tries, Denmark, and Norway. Is it, therefore, permissible to describe the
Treaty as a regional arrangement within the meaning of Chapter VIII of
the Charter of the United Nations?
There is no need to limit regions to land areas. From the point of
view of sea powers, an ocean is a link rather than a barrier. Leaving aside
Portugal, all the Atlantic powers have also values and institutions in
common which, in the preamble to the Pact, are defined as the &dquo;freedom,
common heritage, and civilization of their peoples, founded on the prin-
ciples of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.&dquo;
The fact that the Treaty covers the Algerian departments of France
and attacks on the occupation forces of any party in Europe would not
militate decisively against the classification of the Pact as a regional
arrangement. It is a shortcoming of any regional agreement that regions
do not form watertight compartments. Thus, France is an Atlantic power,
but it is also a Mediterranean power and, in addition, the center of a
colonial empire. As Algiers forms part of metropolitan France, the in,
elegance of including Algiers in the Pact and of excluding neighboring
Tunis and French Morocco was unavoidable. Similarly, the indirect ex-
tension of the Atlantic area to all places in Europe under the occupation
of any of the contracting powers by making attacks on such occupation
forces a casus foederis is no more than realistic. In an age of air and
mechanized warfare, the line from Kiel to Trieste roughly bounds the
security zone which, at present, forms the first line of strategic defense of
the Atlantic powers against attack from the East. Once this is accepted,
even the inclusion of Italy among the countries invited to sign the North
Atlantic Pact can be defended. If Italy were attacked or were to turn
communist, the North-South line of defense which runs through present-
day Europe might be turned. Although Austria and France could be
sealed off against attacks by land, Soviet air bases in Northern Italy would
constitute an additional threat to the Western security zones in Austria
and Germany as well as to France.
There is, however, little need for such a stretch of the imagination.
Nobody would be more embarrassed than the signatories if their Pact
were to be described as a regional arrangement. Beyond asserting...