Robert Taft on NATO

An undertaking by the most powerful nation in the world to arm half the world against the other half goes far beyond any "right of collective defense if an armed attacked occurs." It violates the whole spirit of the United Nations Charter. . . . The Atlantic Pact moves in exactly the opposite direction from the purposes of the charter and makes a farce of further efforts to secure international justice through law and justice. It necessarily divides the world into two armed camps. . . . This treaty, therefore, means inevitably an armament race, and armament races in the past have led to war.

~ Robert A. Taft, A Foreign Policy for Americans (1951), pp. 89–90, 113