The North Atlantic Treaty--preamble and Principles

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 0
• Publication year: 2019
• topic: Military Law

The North Atlantic Treaty--Preamble and Principles

Mette Prassé Hartov

THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY—PREAMBLE AND PRINCIPLES^†

Mette Prassé Hartov^*

[I]t might be thought that the Treaty is exclusively a military alliance ... Nevertheless, the Preamble and the first two articles of the Treaty make it crystal clear that the member countries believe they belong to a community of nations within which co-operation should be developed not only for defence, but in all fields.¹

Introduction

Of its fourteen articles, five articles in the North Atlantic Treaty ("Treaty") reference the Charter of the United Nations.² Not all of the original twelve Allies were at the time parties to the charter, and the references were crafted to consolidate communities of mutual values and interest while clearly defining the purpose and principles of the Alliance as a collective self-defense initiative.³ The references to the Charter and, in supporting discussions, to the Vandenberg Resolution, were not a coincidence: "This was to assure Congress and the American public that the treaty's purpose was not only to support the aims of the world organization but to conform with its restrictions as well."⁴

These references framed the context and purpose of the Treaty in 1949 as it does in 2019. The Treaty and as such the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) rely on the United Nations to maintain international peace and security, "[t]he Treaty thus operates inside the Charter but outside the veto. It does not replace United Nations peace machinery; it functions only if and when that machinery breaks down."⁵ Even today the link between the U.N. Charter and the

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Treaty is often restated by NATO. It is repeated in the strategic concepts and keystone documents adopted by NATO over the years, beginning with the first Strategic Concept citing the Preamble in its entirety.⁶ The Terms of Reference for the North Atlantic Council adopted in 1949 defines that the:

task of the Council is to assist the Parties in implementing the Treaty and particularly in attaining its basic objective. That objective is to assist, in accordance with the Charter, in achieving the primary purpose of the United Nations—the maintenance of international peace and security.⁷

When NATO in 1994 adopted the Partnership for Peace Framework it, too, repeated the commitment:

to fulfil in good faith the obligations of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights; specifically, to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, to respect existing borders and to settle disputes by peaceful means.⁸

While NATO is not an observer to the General Assembly, institutional relations between NATO and the U.N. have developed over the years.⁹ NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept references the 2008 NATO and the U.N. Declaration on enhanced dialogue, regular political consultations, and practical cooperation.¹⁰ The Joint Declaration was reissued in 2018 by NATO's Secretary General and the Secretary General of the U.N., facilitating exchanges and dialogue between the two organizations.¹¹

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I. History and Preparatory Work

A. The Preamble

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security.
They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty:¹²

The draft treaty circulated by the Ambassadors' Committee in December of 1948 did not include a preamble, but the earlier Washington Paper from September 1948 had already proposed a starting point for discussion based on the Rio Treaty, the Brussels Treaty, and the U.N. Charter, mirroring a traditional preamble.¹³ However, the conventional format was dismissed in favor of a shorter text with more "popular appeal," expressing "briefly in simple prose the main objectives of the parties concluding the North Atlantic Treaty."¹⁴ This approach was adopted to mitigate more elaborate proposals, and it specifically omitted suggestions to include a reference in the Preamble to Chapter VIII of the U.N. Charter.¹⁵ It also marked a different approach to treaty drafting—which is repeated in the preambles of the subsequent status agreements from 1951 and 1952.¹⁶ In February 1949 Mr. Jack Hickerson, a U.S. State Department representative, in conversation with Mr. Nicholas Henderson, from the British Embassy in Washington, suggested to consider including a statement that the Treaty signatories were hoping to "see the development of other regional and

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collective defence arrangements in other parts of the world in accordance with the United Nations Charter."¹⁷ This suggestion did not make it into the Preamble but may have inspired the later wording of Article 12—Review Clause—found in the final draft and referring to "universal as well as regional arrangements [established] under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security."¹⁸

Drafted in the sixteenth meeting, only weeks before the signature of the Treaty, the Preamble may be a stylistic compromise, but it skillfully captures the aspirations of the signatories to the Treaty in three short lines.¹⁹ It ties the Treaty to the U.N. Charter, it describes the non-military aspects of the Alliance, and it defines the military resolution of the treaty.²⁰ The first line deliberately uses the verb "reaffirm" instead of "undertake" to alleviate the status of Portugal and Italy as—at the time—non-signatories to the Charter.²¹ The second paragraph was equally significant and perhaps particularly against the historical setting of the Alliance. It is repeated in the 1949 Terms of Reference of the North Atlantic Council, where the reference to "common heritage" is termed as the "common heritage of freedom and to defend themselves against aggression while emphasizing at the same time their desire to live in peace with all governments and all peoples."²² This is repeated in the 1951 Ottawa Declaration by the North Atlantic Council: "The peoples of the North Atlantic Community are united under the North Atlantic Treaty to preserve their freedom and to develop their common heritage of democracy, liberty and the rule of law."²³ Without diminishing the possible spiritual notion which has been inferred by some, the reference distinguishes a community of like-minded nations striving to consolidate the non-military side of an Alliance tasked with collective self-defense.²⁴ The uniting values of democracy, liberty, and of rule of law appears

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to be another testimony to the Charter of the United Nations, which in its preamble underlines the importance of governance, separation of powers, equality before the law, respect for human rights,²⁵ and "to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained."²⁶

Early North Atlantic Council Declarations—such as the 1951 Ottawa Declaration—refers to the "North Atlantic Community," a term repeated in the years that followed.²⁷ The term may have been a nod to a Canadian request repeated during the drafting to expand Article 2 to include economic, social, and cultural cooperation. The proposal, which did not enjoy support with the U.S. and U.K. in the course of drafting the Treaty, was picked up at the 1951 Ottawa meeting in which the North Atlantic Council established a Ministerial Committee.²⁸ The Committee was tasked to present recommendations in the fields of: (1) coordination and consultation on foreign policy directed at promoting peace; (2) economic, financial, and social cooperation promoting stability and wellbeing—within the North Atlantic Treaty area, seeking to "build up the inner strength of the North Atlantic Community;" and (3) collaboration in the fields of culture and public information.²⁹ In 1953, the Committee on Information and Cultural Relations was formed with the purpose of disseminating information—"cultural exchange"—regarding the Alliance and its activities.³⁰ It was an early public relations and diplomacy initiative seeking to "raise public awareness and understanding of NATO's policies and objectives" and working together with the member states and the International

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Staff at NATO Headquarters.³¹ This area of the Alliance was subject to further review in the 1956 report submitted by Lester B. Pearson, Foreign Minister of Canada, Gaetano Martino, Foreign Minister of Italy, and Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of Norway, also referred to as NATO's Three Wise Men.³² The Committee still exists and in 2004 was renamed to the Committee on Public Diplomacy (CPD).³³ These are not the only non-military activities dating back to the origins of the Treaty. The NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme marked its 60th anniversary in 2018, and other initiatives such as the Atlantic Treaty Association and its youth association has continued to expand with the accession of new members.³⁴ Likewise, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has since 1955 engaged parliamentarians in trans-Atlantic dialogue.³⁵

B. The Principles

Article 1: The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United

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