Van Europese naar Atlantische defensie: en retour: 60 jaar Belgische NAVO-politiek

Rik Coolsaet explores the successive policy orientations of Belgian defence policy since the second world war. In 1945 Belgium pursued an original security architecture, with the new United Nations at the top and the closest possible cooperation between Western European countries at its basis. This regional structure was described in terms of a ‘generalised Locarno Pact’ with military, political but also economic arrangements linking the countries of Western Europe under British leadership. British reluctance and the growing importance of the United States sealed the fate of this proposal. In the summer of 1948 Belgium opted definitively for an Atlantic Europe, not out of fear over Soviet expansionism, but largely due to the critical importance of the United States as provider of the much needed economic and political stability within European countries. At the end of the Cold War however, Belgium returned to its roots when it again increasingly identified with the European Union as the primary reference point in its defence policy to the detriment of the Atlantic Alliance