rapid programmes of privatization, sometimes involving the allocation of
vouchers to all citizens, regardless of their individual financial resources, to
ensure that all had a share in the ownership of the economy.
NATO
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is by far the most important of a
set of politico-military organizations of co-operating Western states set up after
the Second World War, during the early part of thecold war, to protect non-
communist states from a perceived threat from the Eastern bloc. Similar bodies,
like the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty
Organization (CENTO) used to cover military threats elsewhere in the world,
but it was NATO that survived and remained at the forefront of East–West
relations. NATO’s membership includes the USA, Canada and most Western
European countries, although some, such as Sweden, Ireland and Switzerland,
have remained neutral states. France is only partially a member, having with-
drawn from the integrated military structure in 1966. Although France has
preferred to maintain a large degree of independence in defence policies, the
French military have continued to co-operate and liaise with NATO, and
could have been expected to play a full part in any war on the central front
involving theWarsaw Pact. NATO works by co-ordinating the military
capacities of its member states and allotting specific peacetime and wartime
tasks. Under war conditions units of all the member states would come under a
unified international command-structure, the head of which has always been a
US general in recognition of the huge and disproportionate cost to the USA of
NATO membership.
Much progress was made in the area ofarms controlduring the 1980s not
only in reducing the numbers of long-range nuclear missiles controlled by the
USA and the then Soviet Union, but also in the withdrawal of intermediate
and short-range nuclear weapons from the European continent itself. Further-
more, the members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in November 1990,
signed theConventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which was to
reduce levels of conventional force in Europe and effectively confirmed the
end of the cold war. With these developments, and the final dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO was left to seek a new justification for its
existence; there was little support from member governments for the abolition
of NATO, crucially because it provides a means of keeping the USA involved
in European security. Militarily NATO was restructured to emphasize smaller
and lighter forces which can be deployed easily to any trouble spot in Europe,
and to reduce costs by relying much more heavily on reserves for the heavy
battle formations that were previously its characteristic mode. NATO forces
supported the UN operations in Bonsian and Herzegovina in the mid-1990s,
NATO