NATO and the Warsaw Pact

NATO was created on April 4th, 1949 as a military alliance between the U.S. and many of the Western European nations. It was formed as a defense mechanism against communism. Under the treaty, if any nation that was part of the treaty was attacked, then all of the other allied nations would come to its defense. At first, NATO was really just an agreement for the U.S. to defend any of the nations involved in NATO, but that began to change after 1950. After the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Korea, the other nations began to realize that they couldn't just wait around for the U.S> to defend them against the Soviet Union.

The Warsaw Pact was created 6 years after NATO was created between the Soviet Union and its "satelite countries". The Warsaw Pact was originally created to counter NATO. At first, it was incredibly powerful, but the Warsaw Pact soon fell far behind NATO technologically. Eventually, the Warsaw Pact collapsed and was terminated in 1991. Oddly enough, the Soviet Union-now Russia- is now a part of NATO when NATO was originally created to go against it.