April 4, 2024, marks the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). According to the NATO website, the organization was founded by 12 countries at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington, D.C. (USA). Within five months of its signing, the treaty was ratified by the respective signatory states. As reported by Bill Smith on the Canadian Encyclopedia, Base Gagetown (now 5th Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown) was constructed as a result of Canada’s NATO commitments to have a location large enough for division-sized training.
NATO has grown over the years to include 32 member states. J.I Granatstein from the Canadian Encyclopedia states that during the Cold War, NATO forces provided a significant deterrence against the Soviet Union. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO entered a new era with different responsibilities. NATO went on to aide in curbing the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and enacted Article 5’s “collective defence” clause on 11 September 2001in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. The ensuing fight against terrorism in Afghanistan lasted from 2001 to 2014 for Canadian troops.
The role of NATO is ever evolving in a fast-changing world. As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined NATO on 04 April 2023, and Sweden followed suit on 07 March 2024. NATO continues to be a vital partnership for Canadian national defence and is a bulwark against terrorism and foreign adversarial aggression towards Canadian sovereignty and its allies.
Base Gagetown Facebook page: www.facebook.com/base.gagetown
2Lt/Slt Raghav Sharma