Imponderable Alliance

NATO: The Transatlantic Bargain By Harlan Cleveland

Harper, 204 pp., $6.50 The North Atlantic Treaty of Alliance of 1949 was something new in the history of diplomacy. Very new. Its necessary and unwitting promoters were two infamous dictators, one dead, the other quite alive—namely Adolf Hitler, who convinced civilized people that appeasement or neutrality in the face of aggression was futile, and Joseph Stalin, who convinced pretty much the same people that he was simply Hitler all over again in the service of a different fanaticism. In unprecedented fashion the alliance brought together a group of twelve powers, most of whom, including the United States and Britain, had prided themselves previously on their historic ability to avoid peacetime entanglements.

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Brenton H. Smith

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NATO: The Transatlantic Bargain By Harlan Cleveland

Harper, 204 pp., $6.50 The North Atlantic Treaty of Alliance of 1949 was something new in the history of diplomacy. Very new. Its necessary and unwitting promoters were two infamous dictators, one dead, the other quite alive—namely Adolf Hitler, who convinced civilized people that appeasement or neutrality in the face of aggression was futile, and Joseph Stalin, who convinced pretty much the same people that he was simply Hitler all over again in the service of a different fanaticism. In unprecedented fashion the alliance brought together a group of twelve powers, most of whom, including the United States and Britain, had prided themselves previously on their historic ability to avoid peacetime entanglements.