| This study investigates the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia. This crisis is an excellent prism through which to view the ways that NATO balanced competing desires for defense and detente in the late 1960s. The literature on NATO during this period principally focuses on internal strategy debates. Although these issues are important, this emphasis omits the crucial significance of the December 1967 Harmel Report on the Future Tasks of the Alliance, which called for a two-pillar framework of defense and detente in NATO.; The principal argument made in this dissertation is that, during the Prague Spring, NATO allies focused almost exclusively on the detente "pillar" of the Harmel framework, pursuing initiatives to lower East-West tensions. In the long run, this approach was successful as discussions on strategic arms limitations began in 1969. In the short run, however, NATO's heady pursuit of detente blinded members to any opportunities to forestall the invasion of Czechoslovakia and left the alliance politically and militarily unprepared for the Soviet-led Operation Danube. NATO action in the aftermath of the intervention led to a strengthening of alliance military posture, but, more importantly, helped the allies to establish a workable balance between the two Harmel pillars. This commitment to the Harmel framework of defense and detente would guide NATO throughout the remainder of the Cold War.; This study also develops a more international history of the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis. Numerous scholarly works during the 1990s focused on new evidence emerging from the archives of Eastern Europe. This is the first investigation, however, of the Western perspectives on the Prague Spring and subsequent invasion. It provides important new insights on the causes and effects of events such as the Brezhnev Doctrine. By examining the perspectives of not only Prague and Moscow, but also Washington, and Brussels, this study helps to show the interconnections between East and West and how, ultimately, the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia would positively affect NATO while having disastrous long-term implications for both Communism in Czechoslovakia and for the legitimacy and stability of the Warsaw Pact. |
