North Atlantic Treaty Organization

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established under the North Atlantic Treaty (Apr. 4, 1949) by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. Greece and Turkey entered the alliance in 1952, West Germany (now Germany) entered in 1955, and Spain joined in 1982. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined, and Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined five years later, bringing the membership to 26. NATO maintains headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

The treaty, one of the major Western countermeasures against the threat of aggression by the Soviet Union during the cold war, was aimed at safeguarding the freedom of the North Atlantic community. Considering an armed attack on any member an attack against all, the treaty provided for collective self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The treaty was also designed to encourage political, economic, and social cooperation. The organization was reorganized and centralized in 1952.

In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty Organization, NATO's role in world affairs changed, and U.S. forces in Europe were gradually reduced. Many East European nations sought NATO membership as a counterbalance to Russian power, but they, along with other European and Asian nations (including Russia), initially were offered only membership in the more limited

Partnership for Peace, formed in 1994. Twenty-three countries now belong to the partnership, which engages in joint military exercises with NATO. NATO is not required to defend Partnership for Peace nations from attack. In 2002, NATO and Russia established the NATO-Russia Council, through which Russia participates in NATO discussions on many nondefense issues.

NATO has increasingly concentrated on extending security and stability throughout Europe, and on peacekeeping efforts in Europe and elsewhere. NATO air forces were used under UN auspices in punitive attacks on Serb forces in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, and the alliance's forces were subsequently used for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. NATO again launched air attacks in Mar.–June, 1999, this time on the former Yugoslavia following following the breakdown of negotiations over Kosovo. In June, 1999, NATO was authorized by the United Nations to begin trying to restore order in the province, and NATO peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo. In Aug., 2003, NATO assumed command of the international security force in the Kabul area in Afghanistan, which by 2006 had expanded to include some 31,000 troops (including 11,000 Americans) deployed throughout Afghanistan; and in Oct., 2003, a NATO rapid-response force was established. The membership of many NATO nations in the increasingly integrated European Union (EU) has led to tensions within NATO between the United States and those EU nations, particularly France and Germany, who want to develop an EU defense force, which necessarily would not include non-EU members of NATO.

NATO's highest organ, the North Atlantic Council, may meet on several levels—heads of government, ministers, or permanent representatives. The council determines policy and supervises the civilian and military agencies; NATO's secretary-general chairs the council. Under the council is the Military Committee, which may meet at the chiefs of staff or permanent representative level. Its headquarters in Washington, D.C., has representatives of the chiefs of staff of all member countries; France, however, withdrew from the Military Committee from 1966 to 1995 while remaining a member of the council.

NATO is now divided into two commands. Allied Command Operations is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). SACEUR directs NATO forces and, in time of war, would control all land, sea, and air operations. Allied Command Transformation, with headquarters at Norfolk, Va., is responsible for making recommendations on the strategic transformation of NATO forces in the post-cold-war era.

Bibliography

See P. H. Spaak, Why NATO? (1959); R. Osgood, The Entangling Alliance (1964); A. Beaufre, NATO and Europe (1966); J. Huntley, The NATO Story (1969); J. A. Huston, One for All: NATO Strategy and Logistics through the Formative Period, 1949–1969 (1984); L. P. Brady and J. P. Kaufman, ed., NATO in the 1980s (1985); W. H. Park, Defending the West (1986); J. R. Golden et al., ed., NATO at Forty (1989).

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NATO

 in full North Atlantic Treaty Organization

International military alliance created to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion. A 1948 collective-defense alliance between Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg was recognized as inadequate to deter Soviet aggression, and in 1949 the U.S. and Canada agreed to join their European allies in an enlarged alliance. A centralized administrative structure was set up, and three major commands were established, focused on Europe, the Atlantic, and the English Channel (disbanded in 1994). The admission of West Germany in 1955 led to the Soviet Union's creation of the opposing Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact. France withdrew from military participation in 1966. Since NATO ground forces were smaller than those of the Warsaw Pact, the balance of power was maintained by superior weaponry, including intermediate-range nuclear weapons. After the Warsaw Pact's dissolution and the end of the Cold War in 1991, NATO withdrew its nuclear weapons and attempted to transform its mission. It involved itself in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stated that an attack on one signatory would be regarded as an attack on the rest. This article was first invoked in 2001 in response to the terrorist September 11 attacks against the U.S. Additional countries joined NATO in 1999 and 2004 to bring the number of full members to 26.