Реферат: NATO Essay Research Paper The North Atlantic

factors of the late sixties and early seventies was America?s involvement in

the Vietnam War. This horrifying war sapped the US economy, morale, and foreign

policy prowess. Although the 1970s began with the Strategic Arms Limitation

Talks (SALT I), this decade created more disillusionment by world powers as the

Soviets continued to rapidly stock their military and nuclear arsenals. In 1979,

NATO initiated a dual-track program where new defense efforts were coupled with

new efforts in reconciliation and cooperation. Unfortunately, the steps taken by

both sides were small and uneventful and usually were retracted within a short

time. This brings us to the Reagan years, the eighties, and to the closest

watched political tug-a-war in years. This decade opened with a deepening crisis

and in 1983 the USSR failed to prevent the deployment of intermediate-range

ballistic missiles, sent to counteract the ones they had pointed a Europe?s

major cites. It is possible to say that NATO help greatly in dissuading the USSR

from following through on attacking Western Europe. The ?game? had gotten

deadly serious and in 1987 both sides agreed to talks. Out of these talks came

the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, which not only gave people a

sense of relief across the world it also began the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact

and the WTO. The change in the wind prompted the Berlin Wall that separated a

people for over twenty-five years to be torn down and Germany was finally

reunified. The late eighties to the mid-nineties finally saw the beginning of

the end to the Cold War. This time also showed the world the success of NATO and

the unified efforts of its members in meeting the challenge of the Communists

and the WTO. NATO had finally shown itself to be a viable source for

communication and resolution between factions instead of war. That became more

evident in the 1990s, with the continued depletion of nuclear arsenals on both

sides, the dissolving of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, and the continued duties to

help return the countries of Eastern Europe to normalcy. An example of this is

evident in Bosnia/Herzegovina and Kosovo. These areas and people have been able

to strengthen their nationalistic feeling with both encouraging and disastrous