II.

Background

In the years after World War II, many Western leaders saw the policies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as threatening the stability and peace of Europe. The forcible installation of Communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, territorial expansion by the USSR, and its support of guerrilla war in Greece and regional separatism in Iran, appeared to many as the first steps in new aggression that might lead to another world war. Subsequent events, including the deterioration of the situation in Greece and the near collapse of war-devastated European economies during the winter of 1946-1947, led the United States to two important initiatives: the European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, which the Eastern Europeans rejected under Soviet compulsion; and the Truman Doctrine. This, although directed at the situation in Greece and Turkey, contained a generalized pledge to help any nation defending its freedom and democracy. Led by the United Kingdom and its foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, Western European countries hastened to seize this opportunity and formed the Western Union defensive alliance by the Brussels Treaty of 1948. This willingness to stand together and the Soviet-instigated Blockade of Berlin, which began in March 1948, stimulated negotiations that culminated in the North Atlantic Treaty of Washington in April 1949.