Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Treaty of Brussels

 
British History: treaty of Brussels
Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > British History

Signed on 17 March 1948 between the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, it set up the Brussels Treaty Organization, also known as Western European Union. The Brussels treaty was therefore a vital step on the road to the formation of NATO.

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Wikipedia: Treaty of Brussels
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
This article is about the 1948 treaty. For the 1516 treaty, see War of the League of Cambrai.
Question book-new.svg
 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)
Treaty of Brussels
Treaty of Economic, Social and Cultural Collaboration and Collective Self-Defence
Signing of the Treaty of Brussels (1948).jpeg
Signing ceremony
Type of treaty Founding treaty
Signed
Location		 17 March 1948
Brussels, Belgium
Signatories Belgium
France
Luxembourg
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Depositary Government of Belgium
Languages English and French
Wikisource logo Treaty of Brussels at Wikisource

The Treaty of Brussels was signed on March 17, 1948 between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as an expansion to the previous year's defence pledge, the Dunkirk Treaty, signed between Britain and France. As the Treaty of Brussels contained a mutual defence clause, it provided a basis the Western European Union later was established upon.

Contents

Background

The Treaty provided western Europe with a bulwark against the communist threat. It also brought forth greater collective security, something that the new Cold War cleavage had made the United Nations incapable of.[citation needed] The Pact had cultural and social clauses, and concepts for the setting up of a 'Consultative Council'. The basis for this was that a cooperation between Western nations would help stop the spread of Communism.

In that it was an effort towards European post-war security cooperation, the Brussels Pact was a precursor to NATO and similar to it in the sense that it promised European mutual defence. However, it greatly differed from NATO in that it envisaged a purely European mutual defence pact primarily against Germany, whereas NATO took shape the next year, on the recognition that Europe was unavoidably divided into two opposing blocks (western and communist), that the USSR was a much greater threat than the possibility of a resurgent Germany, and that western European mutual defence would have to be atlantacist (i.e. including North America).

In September 1948, the parties to the Treaty of Brussels decided to create a military agency under the name of the Western Union Defence Organization. It consisted of a WU Defence Committee at Prime Ministerial level, and a WU Combined Chiefs of Staff committee, including all the national chiefs of staff, which would direct the operative organisation.[1] Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (UK) was appointed permanent Chairman of the Land, Naval and Air Commanders-in-Committee, with headquarters in Fontainebleau, France. The nominated commanders-in-chief were General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (France) as C-in-C, Land Forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir James Robb (UK) as C-in-C, Air Forces, and Vice-Admiral Robert Jaujard (France) for the Navy, as Flag Officer Western Europe.[2] Volume 3 of Nigel Hamilton's Life of Montgomery of Alamein gives a good account of the disagreements between Montgomery and de Lattre which caused much ill-feeling in the headquarters.

The Treaty of Brussels was amended by the Protocol signed in Paris at the conclusion of the London and Paris Conferences on 23 October 1954, which added West Germany and Italy to the Western Union. On this occasion it was renamed the Western European Union.

Signing ceremony

The Treaty was signed by the following plenipotentiaries:

NATO

When the division of Europe into two opposing camps became unavoidable, the threat of the USSR and Eastern Bloc became much more important than the threat of German rearmament.

Western Europe therefore sought a new mutual defence pact involving the United States, a powerful military force for such an alliance. The United States, recognising the growing threat of the USSR, was responsive to this idea.

There was therefore rapid progress on this idea, and secret meetings had already begun by the end of March, where American, Canadian and British officials negotiated over the concept. Eventually, it would lead to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation by the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington DC in 1949. The WUDO structure was absorbed into NATO from December 1950 to April 1951.[3] NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe took over the WEU's defence role.

References

  1. ^ Sean Maloney, 'To Secure Command of the Sea,' University of New Brunswick thesis 1991, p.95-97 and Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years
  2. ^ NATO Archives, The First Five Years and The Western Union and its defence organisation, RUSI Journal, 1993 (reprint from 1948-9)
  3. ^ Hansard extract February 18, 1957

External links

v • d • e
Western European Union
Flag · Assembly · Secretary-General · Treaty of Brussels
Members Western European Union Flag.svg
Associate
Observer
Partner

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Treaty of Brussels".  Read more