NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a military alliance that was established on April 4, 1949, with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, also known as the Washington Treaty. The North Atlantic Treaty sought to counter expansion and aggression from the former Soviet Union, including creating a response to Soviet armies stationed in Central and Eastern Europe in post-World War II Europe.

Photo opportunity at the forming of NATO.

The NATO Alliance is composed of various member states from North America and Europe. These members, as part of the treaty, work to treat any incursion on their territory or for their sovereignty as an attack against all treaty members, with other members assisting the attacked member, up to and including military forces. The alliance is a network of structured partnerships with countries from the Euro-Atlantic area, the Mediterranean, and the Gulf region, with individual relationships with other partners across the globe. NATO and its member states pursue dialogue and practical cooperation with various partner countries and international actors and organizations. There are the original member states, and following that, various other countries have joined the NATO organization.

Map showing the growth of NATO.

Despite the accords that every member state signs as part of the NATO Alliance Accession, each member state has room to negotiate its own relationship in the alliance. The two best examples of this come in Germany and France. Germany's inclusion in NATO, originally as West Germany, was difficult to negotiate as there were concerns and hesitancy in West Germany's inclusion over the country's history and the occupation of East Germany by the Soviet Union and the possibility of a Soviet invasion that could trigger the treaty's Article 5 protection. Accordingly, arrangements were made for Germany's "safe" participation in the alliance as part of the Paris Agreements of October 1954, which ended the occupation of the West Germany territory by the western Allies and provided for the country's accession to the Brussels Treaty, and in 1955 joined NATO. Germany's joining of NATO prompted the Soviet Union to form the Warsaw Pact in Central and Eastern Europe in the same year.

Similarly, France's relationship with NATO was equally unique, as relations between France and other members of NATO became strained after 1958, given then-President Charles de Gaulle's criticism of the United States' dominance of the organization and the intrusion upon French sovereignty by NATO's staff and activities. This included his argument that such integration and intrusion subjected France to "automatic war" at the decision of foreigners. By 1966, France formally withdrew from the military command structure of NATO and required NATO forces and headquarters to leave French soil. However, the country continued adherence to the treaty in the case of unprovoked aggression and maintained a liaison relationship. As a result, NATO moved its headquarters from Paris to Brussels. In 2009, France rejoined the military command structure of NATO.

Signed on April 4, 1949, the Treaty is designed to safeguard the freedom, common heritage, and civilization of the peoples of the signatories, including the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Further, the Treaty and its members work to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. To do this, the agreement of the North Atlantic Treaty is set forth in fourteen articles:

• Article 1: The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace, security, and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
• Article 2: The Parties will contribute toward the further developments of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaborations between any or all of them.
• Article 3: To more effectively achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.
• Article 4: The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the Parties is threatened.
• Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and, consequently, they agree that if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.
• Article 6: For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of Turkey, or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer; on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force of the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
• Article 7: This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way, the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties, which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.
• Article 8: Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now in force between it and any other of the Parties or any third State is in conflict with the provisions of this Treaty and undertakes not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.
• Article 9: The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be represented, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty. The Council shall be so organized as to be able to meet promptly at any time. The Council shall set up such subsidiary bodies as may be necessary; in particular, it shall establish immediately a defense committee, which shall recommend measures for the implementation of Articles 3 and 5.
• Article 10: The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.
• Article 11: This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. The instruments of ratification shall be deposited as soon as possible with the Government of the United States of America, which will notify all the other signatories of each deposit. The Treaty shall enter into force between the States that have ratified it as soon as the ratification of the majority of the signatories, including the ratifications of Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have been deposited and shall come into effect with respect to other States on the date of the deposit of their ratifications.
• Article 12: After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter, the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, consult together for the purpose of reviewing the Treaty, having regard for the factors then affecting peace and security in the North Atlantic area, including the development of universal as well as regional arrangements under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security.
• Article 13: After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.
• Article 14: This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies will be transmitted by that Government to the Governments of other signatories.

President Truman signing the treaty.

After the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945, Europe was economically and militarily exhausted while the newly powerful Communist parties had risen in France and Italy after the disappointments of their former governments. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had emerged from the Second World War as a dominant force, with armies spread across Eastern and Central Europe having been largely responsible for the fall of the reign of Nazi Germany, while Moscow was known at the time to be sponsoring Communist and Communist sympathizers across Europe to increase their sphere of influence. In those countries, especially in Eastern Europe, which had already come under Soviet sponsorship, had further consolidated the control of their governments of those countries and suppressed all non-Communist political activity.

The fracturing of Germany post-World War II.

This sphere of influence and control would come to be known as the Iron Curtain, a term popularized by Winston Churchill. Despite their cooperation during the Second World War, by 1948, relationships between the former allies, especially the western Allies and the Soviets, had completely broken down. Nowhere was this breakdown in relationship more evinced than in Germany, which had been split between occupied sectors that would coalesce into West Germany, controlled by those western Allies and East Germany, controlled by the Soviet Union. Berlin, as a symbol of previous German power, was further split between these two forces and would be split between East and West Berlin, which would eventually be separated by the Berlin Wall, and with blockades of West Berlin on the parts of the Soviets (as Berlin lay squarely in East Germany).

In 1948, the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which infused massive amounts of economic aid to the Western and Southern European countries on condition those countries cooperate with and engage in joint planning of their recovery. Under the Brussels Treaty of 1948, the United Kingdom, France, and the Low Countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg—concluded a collective-defense agreement called the Western European Union. However, this would soon be recognized to not be enough to provide an adequate military counterweight to the Soviets.

The exploratory talks for the agreement that would become the North Atlantic Treaty came as Britain, Canada, and the United States, already engaged in a conversation regarding the need for an alternative to the United Nations, were spurred into further action following the February 1948 Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia. The three governments began discussion on a multilateral collective-defense scheme that would enhance Western security and promote democratic values. These discussions would be joined by France, the Low Countries, and Norway before the formal treaty was signed in April 1949.

1952 NATO organizational chart.

NATO is structured around two main parts of the organization: a political component and a military component. The political component of NATO is the North Atlantic Council, which, as a governing body since 1950, was named the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The North Atlantic Council is composed of representatives of NATO member nations and partnership states. The member states meet at least twice a year, while the council, chaired by the NATO secretary-general, remains in permanent session at the ambassadorial level. As the SACEUR position has been held by an American general, the secretary-generalship of the North Atlantic Council is always held by a European minister.

Mid-1960s military organization of NATO.

The key elements of NATO's military organization are the Military Committee, composed of the Chiefs of Defense of NATO member countries, which subsumes two strategic commands: Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT). The ACO is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACUER) and is located at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau, Belgium. ACT is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation (SACT), and is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia.

During the first twenty years of NATO's existence, much of the infrastructure that would be built for NATO forces—including bases, airfields, pipelines, communications networks, and depots—was jointly planned, financed (worth around USD $3 billion), and built, with about one-third of the funding from the United States. Military equipment is generally not procured through NATO funding; rather, each member state is responsible for equipping its forces. However, the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force, a fleet of radar-bearing aircraft designed to protect against a surprise attack, especially a low-flying air attack, was funded jointly by NATO member states.

Member states' primary contribution to NATO is the financial contribution, or the cost of deploying their respective armed forces for NATO-led operations. These expenses are not a part of the NATO budget; rather, they are part of the agreement, with each NATO member committing to spending 2 percent of their annual gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. Nine of the thirty members were expected to have met this threshold in 2022, including the United States, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.

That said, in 2022, NATO's budget, including costs of military and civilian infrastructure, stood around USD$3 billion, while NATO members are estimated to have spent more than $1 trillion on defense in 2022. While this is a lot, the United States' defense spending is expected to account for an estimated 70 percent of that spending. Often, U.S. officials have publicly criticized European members of NATO for failing to meet their budget commitments, although during the Trump presidency, NATO member spending increased slightly due to the president's brash style, and following Russia's full-scale military assault on Ukraine in 2022 that defense spending also increased, in some areas significantly.

Example of NATO forces during combined strength exercises.

NATO's main stated role is to promote and protect peace and to guarantee the territorial integrity, political independence, and security of member states. To do this, the NATO alliance is primarily focused on military forces and ensuring those forces are able to deter and defend effectively. To ensure this capability, NATO undertakes command-post exercises, which focus on commanders, their staffs, and communications between headquarters; live exercises (LIVEX), in which forces participate; and exercise study, which involves a form of map exercise, war game, series of lectures, a discussion group or an operational analysis.

These NATO military exercises are scheduled by a NATO commander with the intent to establish, enhance, and display the military capability of NATO alliance members across the full mission spectrum, including Article 5 collective defense, non-Article 5 crisis response, and consultation and cooperation.

The NATO exercises are focused on ensuring that NATO operations are successful. NATO works to promote democratic values, to help ensure peace and security, including for the peaceful resolution of disputes. In the case where diplomacy fails to resolve a conflict, NATO then relies on its military capacity to undertake crisis-management operations, either alone or in cooperation with other countries or organizations. This is partially to demonstrate the Alliance's willingness to act as a positive force for change in its capacity to meet the security challenges of a given situation and decade.

From the moment of its founding, NATO's primary purpose was to unify and strengthen the Western Allies' military response to a possible invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union and its allies as defined by the Warsaw Pact. Through the early 1950s, NATO largely relied on the threat of nuclear retaliation from the United States to counter the Warsaw Pact's larger contingent of ground forces. However, by 1957, this policy was supplemented by the deployment of American nuclear weapons in Western European bases.

Signing of the Warsaw Pact.

This would further evolve into a "flexible response" strategy, which included a dual-control system to allow the country hosting the nuclear weapons and the United States to veto the use of the weapon. Britain retained control of its strategic nuclear arsenal but brought the country's arsenal under the NATO planning structure, while France's nuclear arsenal remained completely autonomous.

NATO was a fixture throughout the Cold War era. The position and strategy of nuclear deterrence led to a stalemate between the NATO countries and Warsaw Pact countries, which continued through the construction of the Berlin Wall, an increase of tensions during the Korean War and Vietnam War, the detente in the 1970s, and the resurgence of Cold War tensions in the 1980s following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1980.

These tensions would ease with the economic and political reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, including the July 1989 announcement that Moscow would no longer support Communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe and signal his tacit acceptance of their replacement by freely elected administrations. This announcement would effectively dissolve the Warsaw Pact threat, although the pact would exist until 1991. The reunification of Germany in October 1990 and its inclusion in NATO further adapted NATO into a more political alliance devoted to maintaining stability throughout Europe.

President Bill Clinton during the development of the Partnership for Peace program.

Following the dissolution of the Cold War, the NATO treaty was reconceived as a cooperative-security organization that worked to foster dialogue and cooperation with former Warsaw Pact states and to manage conflicts in areas on the European periphery. To achieve these objectives, NATO established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991, which would be replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council to provide a forum for the exchange of views on political and security issues; and would establish the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 1994 to enhance European security and stability through joint military training exercises with NATO and non-NATO states. More than a few of the PfP partner-states would eventually join the NATO treaty.

The NATO objective of managing conflicts in areas on the European periphery led NATO countries to enter the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. This took the form of air strikes staged against positions around the capital of Sarajevo. The resulting Dayton Accords, further, were initialed by representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which committed each state to respect the others' sovereignty and to settle disputes peacefully.

NATO's Stabilization Force.

Further, it also laid the groundwork for stationing NATO peacekeeping troops in the region. This began with a 60,000-strong Implementation Force (IFOR) that would subsequently become a smaller contigent in Bosnia and be renamed the Stabilization Force (SFOR) to reflect the force's role in the region. And again in 1999, NATO led massive air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to force the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milsevic to accede to diplomatic provisions intended to protect the predominantly Muslim Albanian population in Kosovo. This would result in a negotiated settlement where NATO deployed a peacekeeping force called the Kosovo Force (KFOR).

The crisis in Kosovo would renew efforts by the European Union (EU) to construct a new crisis-intervention force, which made the EU less dependent on NATO and U.S. military resources for conflict management. Further, the efforts prompted debate through the EU on whether the increased defensive capabilities would strengthen or weaken NATO, as well as prompt discussions over the future of NATO in the post-Cold War era. These arguments included dissolving the NATO alliance, noting that it was created to confront an enemy that no longer existed; while others called for a broad expansion of NATO membership, even going so far as to include Russia; and most suggested alternative roles, including peacekeeping.

During the presidency of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), the United States led an initiative to enlarge NATO membership and gradually include former Soviet allies. This led to debate over the enlargement, with some arguing that NATO membership was the best way to integrate these states into regional political and economic institutions such as the EU; while others feared future Russian aggression and suggested that NATO membership would guarantee freedom and security for new democratic administrations; others argued that enlargement would incur high costs for the modernization of the military forces of new members; and yet more argued that enlargement would act as a provocation to a state like Russia and hinder the growth of democracy in that country.

Despite these arguments and disagreements, 1999 saw the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland join NATO. Five years later, in 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted as a large group of former Warsaw Pact countries. And in 2009, Albania and Croatia joined the alliance.

NATO Forces deploying in Afghanistan.

Article 5 of the NATO treaty, its collective defense provision, was invoked for the first time following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States perpetrated by the al-Qaeda terrorist network based in Afghanistan. The U.S.-led forces entered Afghanistan with the purpose of toppling the Taliban regime in Kabul, which, once considered done, the UN Security Council authorized an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to support the newly elected Afghanistan government. NATO formally assumed command of ISAF in 2003, which marked the alliance's first operational commitment beyond Europe.

The mission in Afghanistan was considered, by some analysts, to be a turning point for the alliance, which signaled NATO was adapting to the post-Cold War security environment. The mission saw NATO command over 130,000 troops from more than fifty alliance and partner countries at the height of commitment in Afghanistan, before the ISAF completed its mission in 2014. And in 2015, NATO began a non-combat support mission to provide training, funding, and other assistance to the Afghan government. The alliance's twenty-year military operation in Afghanistan would be brought to a close in 2021, with the final withdrawal of U.S. forces. And following the exit, the Taliban regained control of the country.

Beginning in the twenty-first century, Russia and NATO fostered a strategic relationship, entering into a cooperative bond with NATO in 2001 to address such common concerns as international terrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, and arms control. However, this relationship would fray due to regional aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin, beginning with the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia. This led NATO to establish the NATO-Georgia commission, intended to help Georgia achieve its goal of NATO membership and maintain its regional sovereignty.

The NATO-Russia relationship was further untangled in 2014 when pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine after months of protests against his presidency, and Russia's response, which was to invade the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea. Russia's annexation of Crimea led to uprisings in Ukraine's Donbas region which was supported by Russia, while NATO reaffirmed support for Ukraine's democratically elected government and its borders as previously recognized.

Meanwhile, following the September 11 attacks, NATO allies began to focus on military engagement of members outside Europe, which began with the Afghanistan-based mission against Taliban and would evolve into operations in Libya in 2011 against Muammar al-Qaddafi. These operations revived the issue of "burden-sharing" with concerns that many NATO allies did not meet their 2 percent defense spending commitment, and the costs of NATO were not being equitably shared amongst the allies. This issue would be brought up by U.S. President Donald Trump, who further threatened to leave the NATO alliance while questioning its relevance, but eventually, no action was taken, and NATO allies committed to their spending, and by the end of Trump's term, the alliance was largely unchanged.

By the end of 2021, Russia had begun a military buildup along the Ukrainian frontier under the guise of joint maneuvers with the Belarusian army. This led to as many as 190,000 Russian troops along the border by February 2022, leading to the announcement of the beginning of a "special military operation," which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Following the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to Western and NATO countries for military aid. The U.S. took a lead role in marshaling a response to the invasion. This led to a speed and unity of reaction on the part of the NATO alliance, which led many critics and analysts to dispel any concerns of NATO relevance.

Further, this led other European nations to seek to join NATO, with Sweden and Finland, two countries with long histories of neutrality, announcing their intention to join NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In June 2022, at the first NATO summit after the invasion, then-NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced an overhaul of NATO's collective deterrence and defense, along with a formal invitation to Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. Part of the overhaul included an increase in NATO's rapid reaction force (which includes a collection of air, sea, and land units) from 40,000 troops to more than 300,000. Finland would be accepted as the thirty-first member of NATO in April 2023, while Sweden's accession was held up by objections from some NATO members.