Relevance of NATO After the fall of The Berlin Wall - Assignment Example

 Relevance of NATO After the fall of The Berlin Wall The Berlin wall was constructed in 1961 as a result of the different economic views held by theWest Germany and the East Germany. The east held the socialist ideals whereas the west section had capitalist views. It was to prevent emigrations from one side to the other due to the sharp differences in the economic views that they held. East Germany was allied to the Soviet Union while West Germany was affiliated to the west. The suspicions of the post world war ii had not subsided (Kaplan 193). The only difference between the real war and the one that was happening in its aftermath was the weapons used. This was economic war and just like the world war, nations took sides in this one. There were strong economic affiliations that people feared could result in another world war. Measures were taken to ensure that no other war would take place. The west were the ones championing for peace and establishing mechanisms to ensure that another war was averted by all means. Even after the war that ended in 1939, the world still stood on quick sand and just a little trigger like the economic wars could pull the world into yet another. Attacks could still happen at the slightest opportunity (Curtis 77). This is what led to the signing of a treaty that led to the establishment of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It constituted a system of collective defense if any nation was to be attacked by an external party. It was formed as a partnership for peace. It has a military structure whose budget is served by all the member states. Cold war was the worst kind of silent war the world was faced with in the aftermath of the World War II. It could easily degenerate into another deadly war. This is where the relevance of NATO is noted. With NATO in place, it would be really hard to execute a war, because you a nation had to face a collection of others with a strong combined army (Childs 29). It has served the number of attacks that happen, ensuring that their outcomes are not as devastating and as destructive of economies as the two world wars that the globe had seen. Several Warsaw pact countries have since joined the organization. Much of this happened between 1999 and 2001. NATO has, to an extent, contributed to the tranquility that the world now sees. After the Berlin wall had fallen in 1989, NATO was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and performed its first military interventions in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. It has eliminated animosities and suspicions that had ailed the world for the longest time. Q3. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) This was a doctrine of national security policy and military strategy in which full throttle use of weapons of mass destruction would annihilate all the parties involved, the attackers and the defenders. It was a strategy of scaring an attacker from starting an aggression by threatening to use strong weapons against them. That is the theory of deterrence upon which Mutually Assured Destruction was based (Schoenbaum 74). It is a version of the Nash equilibrium in which none of the armed parties has the incentive to start a war/conflict or even to disarm. It is based on the assumption that the attacker and the defender both have enough weapons to destroy each other and if for any reason one nation attacks the other, the latter would retaliate immediately and with equal measure. Hostilities would escalate irreversibly, and this would result in the combatants’ (both) total, mutual land assured destruction. The further assumption is that neither of the sides will be prepared to venture into the war or launch the first strike because the other will launch on warning or with secondary forces, and this can only result in unacceptable mass destruction. It is thought to lead to stable global peace, though in reality, nations of the world cannot be equal in terms of military strength endowments (Volker 62).. It applied mostly between the untied states and the united soviet socialist republic during the cold war. This is essentially what made the war ‘cold’. The weapons that were used in this war were propaganda and sanctions, which made it more of a war of words. The scenario of the mutual assured destruction was that of nuclear deterrence. Q4. Peace support operations These are activities that are performed to with the intention of ensuring everlasting peace. Nations of the world have had their fair share of instabilities that are initiated from within or from external aggression. War causes a lot of problems, the worst being humanitarian crises, violation of human rights and a crippled economy (Fritsch-Bournazel 159). The United Nations have measures to ensure that in the event that peace in a nation is disturbed, either from within or without, there are ways to assist the nation regain peace. Wars from within may be caused by rebellion as is the case in the Arab world and African countries of south Sudan and Somalia. External aggressions are another common scenario (Taylor 48). First generation peace support operations were the initial measures that were employed to bring about peace. They took the dimension of crushing the party that caused peace without regard to what got them aggrieved, leading to the initiation of the war. Second generation peace support operations, on the other hand are a bit structured and seek to create peace through dialogue. This ensured that a lasting peace resulted (Park 197). The second generation peace support operations may don’t happen in the all the cases, unless it’s clear that the conflict and disturbance of peace was caused by an issue that can be addressed by dialogue. Where the aggression is caused by malice and the drive is to cause instability for the sake of it, the first generation measures of brute force are employed. What makes sense ate the end of it all is that peace returns and rebuilding starts (Garthoff 376). The United Nations has scored fairly well on this front; otherwise the world would know no peace. The second generation peace measures are the most recommended because as opposed to the first generation, they don’t worsen the humanitarian crisis situation that an ongoing war has caused already. The first generation measures are often very thorough operations that end up hurting the helpless human population even more, deepening the crisis. Works cited Childs, David. The GDR: Moscow's German Ally, (Second Edition 1988, First Edition. London: George Allen & Unwin, 2009. Print. Curtis, Cate. The Ides of August: The Berlin Wall Crisis—1961. New York City: M. Evans, 2002. Print. Fritsch-Bournazel, Renata, Confronting the German Question: Germans on the East-West Divide, Berg Publishers, 2005. Print. Garthoff, Raymond L. Détente and confrontation: American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings Institution Press, 2006. Print. Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and confrontation: American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings Institution Press, 2010. Print. Kaplan, Lawrence S. NATO Divided, NATO United: The Evolution of an Alliance. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Print. Park, William. Defending the West: a history of NATO. Westview Press, 2001. Print. Schoenbaum, Thomas J. Waging Peace and War: Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson Years. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Print. Taylor, Frederick . The Berlin Wall: A World Divided 1961–1989, London: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print. Volker Rolf Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century, p. 227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Read More