Editing Cold War (1948–1953) (section)

===NATO===
[[File:Nato 1970.jpg|thumb|right|[[NATO]] v. the [[Warsaw Pact]]]]
The United States joined Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands in 1949 to form the [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] (NATO), the United States' first "entangling" European alliance in 170 years. West Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey would later join this alliance. The Eastern leaders retaliated against these steps by integrating the economies of their nations in [[Comecon]], their version of the [[Marshall Plan]]; exploding the first Soviet [[nuclear weapon|atomic device]] in 1949; signing an alliance with [[People's Republic of China]] in February 1950; and forming the [[Warsaw Pact]], Eastern Europe's counterpart to NATO, in 1955. The Soviet Union, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland founded this military alliance.