8 Decades of Collective Security in Europe: A Mini-Course

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If NATO existed in 1914 and 1939 — if European nations, Britain, and the U.S. abided by a collective security agreement that an attack on one of them would be an attack on all of them — World War I and World War II would not have occurred, President Harry Truman contended when he signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. That would have saved between 70 million and 85 million lives.

That number is so staggering it’s difficult if not impossible to imagine how the history of the world since 1914 would be different. An age of empires — the Ottomans; czarist Russia; Austria-Hungary; Germany, Japan and Great Britain — have disappeared into the mists of history. Click to read the rest of the article, subscribe for $5, and view the minicourse of hyperlinks and videos.