The Senate votes 82 to 13: America joins its first peacetime military alliance

Since Washington's Farewell Address, the United States had avoided binding military alliances outside wartime. The Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, signed three months earlier in Washington by twelve founding nations including the United States, Britain, France, and Canada. The treaty committed each signatory to regard an armed attack on any member as an attack on all. It entered into force on August 24, 1949, creating NATO as a standing peacetime alliance aimed squarely at Soviet expansion in Europe…