NATO's main headquarters are located inBrussels, Belgium, whileNATO's military headquarters are nearMons, Belgium. The alliance has increased itsNATO Response Force deployments in Eastern Europe,[9] and the combined militaries of allNATO members include around 3.5 million soldiers and personnel.[10] All member states together cover an area of 25.07 million km2 (9.68 million sq mi) with a population of about 973 million people.[11] Their combined military spending as of 2022[update] constituted around 55 percent ofthe global nominal total.[12] Moreover, members have agreed to reach or maintain the target defence spending of at least two percent of theirGDP by 2024.[13][14]
NATO has its roots in theAtlantic Charter, a 1941 agreement between the United States and United Kingdom. The Charter laid out a framework for international cooperation without territorial expansion afterWorld War II.[17] On 4 March 1947, theTreaty of Dunkirk was signed by France and the United Kingdom during theaftermath of World War II and thestart of the Cold War as aTreaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance in the event of possible attacks by Germany. In March 1948, this alliance was expanded in theTreaty of Brussels to include theBenelux countries, forming the Brussels Treaty Organization, commonly known as theWestern Union.[18] Talks for a wider military alliance, which could include North America, also began that month in the United States, where their foreign policy under theTruman Doctrine set out in 1947 promoted international solidarity against actions they saw as communist aggression, such as theFebruary 1948 coup d'état in Czechoslovakia. These talks resulted in the signature of theNorth Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 by the member states of the Western Union plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.[19] Canadian diplomatLester B. Pearson was a key author and drafter of the treaty.[20][21][22]
The building of theBerlin Wall in 1961 marked a height in Cold War tensions, when 400,000 US troops were stationed in Europe.[27] Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion – doubts that led to the development of theindependent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal ofFrance from NATO's military structure in 1966.[28][29] In 1982, the newly democratic Spain joined the alliance.[30]
TheRevolutions of 1989 in Europe led to a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature, tasks, and focus on the continent. In October 1990,East Germanybecame part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance, and in November 1990, the alliance signed theTreaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) in Paris with the Soviet Union. It mandated specific military reductions across the continent, which continued after the collapse of theWarsaw Pact in February 1991 and thedissolution of the Soviet Union that December, which removed thede facto main adversaries of NATO.[31] This began a drawdown of military spending and equipment in Europe. The CFE treaty allowed signatories to remove 52,000 pieces of conventional armaments in the following sixteen years,[32] and allowed military spending by NATO's European members to decline by 28 percent from 1990 to 2015.[33] In 1990, several Western leaders gave assurances toMikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand further east, as revealed by memoranda of private conversations.[34][35][36][37]
The election of French presidentNicolas Sarkozy in 2007 led to a major reform of France's military position, culminating with the return to full membership on 4 April 2009, which also included France rejoining theNATO Military Command Structure, while maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent.[29][43][44]
The 2014Russian annexation of Crimea led to strong condemnation by all NATO members,[45] and was one of the seven times thatArticle 4, which calls for consultation among NATO members, has been invoked. Prior times included during theIraq War andSyrian civil war.[46] At the2014 Wales summit, the leaders of NATO's member states formally committed for the first time to spend the equivalent of at least two percent of theirgross domestic products on defence by 2024, which had previously been only an informal guideline.[47]
At the2016 Warsaw summit, NATO countries agreed on the creation ofNATO Enhanced Forward Presence, which deployed four multinational battalion-sized battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.[48] Before and during the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, several NATO countries sent ground troops, warships and fighter aircraft to reinforce the alliance's eastern flank, and multiple countries again invoked Article 4.[49][50][51] In March 2022, NATO leaders met at Brussels for anextraordinary summit which also involvedGroup of Seven and European Union leaders.[52] NATO member states agreed to establish four additional battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia,[48] and elements of theNATO Response Force were activated for the first time in NATO's history.[53]
As of June 2022, NATO had deployed 40,000 troops along its 2,500-kilometre-long (1,550 mi) Eastern flank to deter Russian aggression. More than half of this number have been deployed in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, which five countries muster a considerable combined ex-NATO force of 259,000 troops. To supplement Bulgaria's Air Force, Spain sentEurofighter Typhoons, the Netherlands sent eightF-35 attack aircraft, and additional French and US attack aircraft would arrive soon as well.[54]
No military operations were conducted by NATO during the Cold War. Following the end of the Cold War, the first operations,Anchor Guard in 1990 andAce Guard in 1991, were prompted by theIraqi invasion of Kuwait. Airborne early warning aircraft were sent to provide coverage of southeastern Turkey, and later a quick-reaction force was deployed to the area.[55]
On 10 and 11 April 1994, the United Nations Protection Force called in air strikes to protect theGoražde safe area, resulting in the bombing of a Bosnian Serb military command outpost near Goražde by two USF-16 jets acting under NATO direction.[57] In retaliation, Serbs took 150 U.N. personnel hostage on 14 April.[58][59] On 16 April a BritishSea Harrier was shot down over Goražde by Serb forces.[60]
In August 1995, a two-week NATO bombing campaign,Operation Deliberate Force, began against theArmy of the Republika Srpska, after theSrebrenica genocide.[61] Further NATO air strikes helped bring theYugoslav Wars to an end, resulting in theDayton Agreement in November 1995.[61] As part of this agreement, NATO deployed a UN-mandated peacekeeping force, underOperation Joint Endeavor, namedIFOR. Almost 60,000 NATO troops were joined by forces from non-NATO countries in this peacekeeping mission. This transitioned into the smallerSFOR, which started with 32,000 troops initially and ran from December 1996 until December 2004, when operations were then passed onto theEuropean Union Force Althea.[62] Following the lead of its member states, NATO began to award a service medal, theNATO Medal, for these operations.[63]
Negotiations under US Special EnvoyRichard Holbrooke broke down on 23 March 1999, and he handed the matter to NATO,[65] which acted on protecting regional security and started a 78-day bombing campaign on 24 March 1999.[66] Operation Allied Force targeted the military capabilities of what was then theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia. During the crisis, NATO also deployed one of its international reaction forces, theACE Mobile Force (Land), to Albania as the Albania Force (AFOR), to deliver humanitarian aid to refugees from Kosovo.[67]
The campaign was and has been criticized overits civilian casualties, including the bombing of theChinese embassy in Belgrade, and overwhether it had legitimacy. The US, the UK, and most other NATO countries opposed efforts to require the UN Security Council to approve NATO military strikes, such as the action against Serbia in 1999, while France and some others[specify] claimed that the alliance needed UN approval.[68] The US/UK side claimed that this would undermine the authority of the alliance, and they noted that Russia and China would have exercised their Security Council vetoes to block the strike onYugoslavia, and could do the same in future conflicts where NATO intervention was required, thus nullifying the entire potency and purpose of the organization. Recognizing the post-Cold War military environment, NATO adopted the Alliance Strategic Concept during itsWashington summit in April 1999 that emphasized conflict prevention and crisis management.[69]
Milošević finally accepted the terms of an international peace plan on 3 June 1999, ending theKosovo War. On 11 June, Milošević further acceptedUN resolution 1244, under the mandate of which NATO then helped establish theKFOR peacekeeping force. Nearly one million refugees had fled Kosovo, and part of KFOR's mandate was to protect the humanitarian missions, in addition to deterring violence.[70] In August–September 2001, the alliance also mountedOperation Essential Harvest, a mission disarming ethnic Albanian militias in the Republic of Macedonia.[71] As of 2023[update], around 4,500 KFOR soldiers, representing 27 countries, continue to operate in the area.[72]
TheSeptember 11 attacks in the United States caused NATO to invoke its collective defence article for the first time.
TheSeptember 11 attacks in the United States caused NATO to invokeArticle 5 of the NATO Charter for the first time in the organization's history.[73] The Article states that an attack on any member shall be considered to be an attack on all. The invocation was confirmed on 4 October 2001 when NATO determined that the attacks were indeed eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty.[74] The eight official actions taken by NATO in response to the attacks includedOperation Eagle Assist andOperation Active Endeavour, a naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea designed to prevent the movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, and to enhance the security of shipping in general, which began on 4 October 2001.[55]
The alliance showed unity: on 16 April 2003, NATO agreed to take command of theInternational Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which included troops from 42 countries. The decision came at the request of Germany and the Netherlands, the two countries leading ISAF at the time of the agreement, and all nineteen NATO ambassadors approved it unanimously. The handover of control to NATO took place on 11 August, and marked the first time in NATO's history that it took charge of a mission outside the north Atlantic area.[75]
ISAF was initially charged with securingKabul and surrounding areas from theTaliban,al Qaeda and factional warlords, so as to allow for the establishment of theAfghan Transitional Administration headed byHamid Karzai. In October 2003, the UN Security Council authorized the expansion of the ISAF mission throughout Afghanistan,[76] and ISAF subsequently expanded the mission in four main stages over the whole of the country.[77]
On 31 July 2006, the ISAF additionally took overmilitary operations in the south of Afghanistan from a US-led anti-terrorism coalition.[78] Due to the intensity of the fighting in the south, in 2011 France allowed a squadron ofMirage 2000 fighter/attack aircraft to be moved into the area, toKandahar, in order to reinforce the alliance's efforts.[79] During its2012 Chicago Summit, NATO endorsed a plan to end the Afghanistan war and to remove the NATO-led ISAF Forces by the end of December 2014.[80] ISAF was disestablished in December 2014 and replaced by the follow-on trainingResolute Support Mission.[81]
Italian Major General Giovanni Armentani, Deputy Commanding General for the NATO Training Mission, meets with a U.S. Advise and Assist Brigade.
In August 2004, during theIraq War, NATO formed theNATO Training Mission – Iraq, a training mission to assist the Iraqi security forces in conjunction with the US-ledMNF-I.[87] The NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I) was established at the request of theIraqi Interim Government under the provisions ofUnited Nations Security Council Resolution 1546. The aim of NTM-I was to assist in the development of Iraqi security forces training structures and institutions so that Iraq can build an effective and sustainable capability that addresses the needs of the country. NTM-I was not a combat mission but is a distinct mission, under the political control of theNorth Atlantic Council. Its operational emphasis was on training and mentoring. The activities of the mission were coordinated with Iraqi authorities and the US-led Deputy Commanding General Advising and Training, who was also dual-hatted as the Commander of NTM-I. The mission officially concluded on 17 December 2011.[88]
TheNorth Atlantic Council and other countries, including Russia, China and South Korea,[92][93] formedOperation Ocean Shield. The operation sought to dissuade and interrupt pirate attacks, protect vessels, and to increase the general level of security in the region.[94]Beginning on 17 August 2009, NATO deployed warships in an operation to protect maritime traffic in theGulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean fromSomali pirates, and help strengthen the navies and coast guards of regional states.[95]
On 24 March, NATO agreed to take control of the no-fly zone from the initial coalition, while command of targeting ground units remained with the coalition's forces.[100][101] NATO began officially enforcing the UN resolution on 27 March 2011 with assistance from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.[102] By June, reports of divisions within the alliance surfaced as only eight of the 28 member states were participating in combat operations,[103] resulting in a confrontation between US Defense SecretaryRobert Gates and countries such as Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany with Gates calling on the latter to contribute more and the latter believing the organization has overstepped its mandate in the conflict.[104][105][106] In his final policy speech in Brussels on 10 June, Gates further criticized allied countries in suggesting their actions could cause the demise of NATO.[107] The German foreign ministry pointed to "a considerable [German] contribution to NATO and NATO-led operations" and to the fact that this engagement was highly valued by President Obama.[108]
While the mission was extended into September, Norway that day (10 June) announced it would begin scaling down contributions and complete withdrawal by 1 August.[109] Earlier that week it was reportedDanish air fighters were running out of bombs.[110][111] The following week, the head of theRoyal Navy said the country's operations in the conflict were not sustainable.[112] By the end of the mission in October 2011, after the death of Colonel Gaddafi, NATO planes had flown about 9,500 strike sorties against pro-Gaddafi targets.[113][114] A report from the organizationHuman Rights Watch in May 2012 identified at least 72 civilians killed in the campaign.[115]
Following acoup d'état attempt in October 2013, Libyan Prime MinisterAli Zeidan requested technical advice and trainers from NATO to assist with ongoing security issues.[116]
Use ofArticle 5 has been threatened multiple times and four out of seven officialArticle 4 consultations have been called due tospillover in Turkey from theSyrian civil war. In April 2012, Turkish Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdoğan considered invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty to protect Turkish national security in a dispute over the Syrian civil war.[117][118] The alliance responded quickly, and a spokesperson said the alliance was "monitoring the situation very closely and will continue to do so" and "takes it very seriously protecting its members."[119]
Member states of NATO are not obligated to come to the defence of territory south of theTropic of Cancer.
NATO has thirty-two members, mostly in Europe with two in North America. NATO's "area of responsibility", within which attacks on member states are eligible for an Article 5 response, is defined under Article 6 of theNorth Atlantic Treaty to include member territory in Europe, North America, Turkey, and islands in the North Atlantic north of theTropic of Cancer. Attacks on vessels, aircraft and other forces in the North Atlantic (again, north of the Tropic of Cancer) and the Mediterranean Sea may also provoke an Article 5 response.[127] During the original treaty negotiations, the United States insisted that colonies such as theBelgian Congo be excluded from the treaty.[128][129]French Algeria was, however, covered untilits independence on 3 July 1962.[130] Twelve of these thirty-two are original members who joined in 1949, while the other twenty joined in one of ten enlargement rounds.[131]
Special arrangements
The three Nordic countries which joined NATO as founding members, Denmark, Iceland, and Norway, chose to limit their participation in three areas: there would be no permanent peacetime bases, no nuclear warheads and no Allied military activity (unless invited) permitted on their territory. However, Denmark allows theU.S. Space Force to maintainPituffik Space Base, in Greenland.[132]
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, France pursued a military strategy of independence from NATO under a policy dubbed "Gaullo-Mitterrandism".[133]Nicolas Sarkozy negotiated the return of France to the integrated military command and the Defence Planning Committee in 2009, the latter being disbanded the following year. France remains the only NATO member outside the Nuclear Planning Group and, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, will not commit its nuclear-armed submarines to the alliance.[29][43]
NATO was established on 4 April 1949 by the signing of theNorth Atlantic Treaty (Washington Treaty). The 12 founding members of the alliance were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[134]
Four new members joined during the Cold War: Greece (1952), Turkey (1952),West Germany (1955) and Spain (1982). Following thedissolution of the Soviet Union, many formerWarsaw Pact andpost-Soviet states sought membership. In 1990, the territory of the formerEast Germany was added with thereunification of Germany. At the1999 Washington summit, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic officially joined, and NATO issued new guidelines for membership, with individualized "Membership Action Plans". These plans governed the addition of new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.[135] Finland and Sweden are the newest members, joining on 4 April 2023 and 7 March 2024 respectively, spurred on byRussia's invasion of Ukraine.[136][15]
Ukraine's relationship with NATO began with the NATO–Ukraine Action Plan in 2002.[137] In 2010, under PresidentViktor Yanukovych, Ukraine re-affirmed its non-aligned status and renounced aspirations of joining NATO.[138] During the2014 Ukrainian Revolution, Russiaoccupied Crimea and supportedarmed separatists in eastern Ukraine. As a result, in December 2014 Ukraine's parliament voted to end its non-aligned status,[139] and in 2019 it enshrined the goal of NATO membership in theConstitution.[140][141] At the June2021 Brussels Summit, NATO leaders affirmed that Ukraine would eventually join the Alliance, and supported Ukraine's right to self-determination without interference.[142] In late 2021, there was another massive Russian military buildup near Ukraine's borders. On 30 November, Russian president Putin said Ukraine joining NATO, and the deployment ofmissile defense systems orlong-range missiles in Ukraine, would becrossing a red line. However, there were no such plans to deploy missiles in Ukraine.[143][144][145] The Russian Foreign Ministry drafted a treaty that would forbid Ukraine or anyformer Soviet state from ever joining NATO.[146] Secretary-General Stoltenberg replied that the decision is up to Ukraine and NATO members, adding "Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish asphere of influence to try to control their neighbors".[147][148] NATO offered to improve communications with Russia and discuss missile placements and military exercises, as long as Russia withdrew troops from Ukraine's borders.[149] Instead,Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Ukraine applied for NATO membership in September 2022 after Russia proclaimed it hadannexed the country's southeast.[150]
Georgia was promised "future membership" during the 2008 summit in Bucharest,[151] but US presidentBarack Obama said in 2014 that the country was not "currently on a path" to membership.[152]
Russia continued to politically oppose further expansion, seeing it as inconsistent with informal understandings between Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev and European and US negotiators that allowed for a peaceful German reunification.[153] A June 2016Levada Center poll found that 68 percent of Russians think that deploying NATO troops in theBaltic states and Poland – former Eastern bloc countries bordering Russia – is a threat to Russia.[154] In contrast, 65 percent of Poles surveyed in a 2017 Pew Research Center report identified Russia as a "major threat", with an average of 31 percent saying so across all NATO countries,[155] and 67 percent of Poles surveyed in 2018 favour US forces being based in Poland.[156] Of non-CIS Eastern European countries surveyed by Gallup in 2016, all butSerbia andMontenegro were more likely than not to view NATO as a protective alliance rather than a threat.[157] A 2006 study in the journalSecurity Studies argued that NATO enlargement contributed todemocratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe.[158]China also opposes further expansion.[159]
NATO defence expenditure
Direct contributions
Member states pay for NATO's three common funds (the civil and military budgets and the security investment programme) based on a cost-sharing formula that includes per capita gross national income and other factors.[160][161] In 2023–2024, the United States and Germany were the biggest contributors with 16.2% each.[161][162]
Indirect contributions
Member states pay for and maintain their own troops and equipment.[161][162] They contribute to NATO operations and missions by committing troops and equipment on a voluntary basis.[162] Since 2006, the goal has been for each country to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its own defence; in 2014, a NATO declaration said that countries not meeting the goal would "aim to move towards the 2 percent guideline within a decade".[161][163] In July 2022, NATO estimated that 11 members would meet the target in 2023.[163] On 14 February 2024, NATO Secretary GeneralJens Stoltenberg said that 18 member states would meet the 2% target in 2024.[164] On 17 June 2024, prior to the2024 Washington summit, Stoltenberg updated that figure and announced that a record 23 of 32 NATO member states were meeting their defense spending targets of 2% of their country's GDP.[165][166] NATO added that defense spending for European member states and Canada was up 18% in the past year alone.[165][166]
Partnership for Peace conducts multinational military exercises such as Cooperative Archer, which took place in Tbilisi in July 2007 with 500 servicemen from four NATO members, eight PfP members, and Jordan, a Mediterranean Dialogue participant.[167]
ThePartnership for Peace (PfP) programme was established in 1994 and is based on individual bilateral relations between each partner country and NATO: each country may choose the extent of its participation.[168] Members include all current and former members of theCommonwealth of Independent States.[169] TheEuro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) was first established on 29 May 1997, and is a forum for regular coordination, consultation and dialogue between all fifty participants.[170] The PfP programme is considered the operational wing of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership.[168] Other third countries have also been contacted for participation in some activities of the PfP framework, such as Afghanistan.[171]
The European Union (EU) signed a comprehensive package of arrangements with NATO under theBerlin Plus agreement on 16 December 2002. With this agreement, the EU was given the possibility of using NATO assets if it wanted to act independently in an international crisis, on the condition that NATO itself did not want to act – the so-called "right of first refusal".[172] For example, Article 42(7) of the 1982Treaty of Lisbon specifies that "If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power". The treaty applies globally to specified territories, whereas NATO is restricted under its Article 6 to operations north of theTropic of Cancer. It provides a "double framework" for the EU countries that are also linked with the PfP programme.[173][174]
Additionally, NATO cooperates and discusses its activities with numerous other non-NATO members. TheMediterranean Dialogue was established in 1994 to coordinate in a similar way withIsrael and countries in North Africa. TheIstanbul Cooperation Initiative was announced in 2004 as a dialogue forum for the Middle East along the same lines as the Mediterranean Dialogue. The four participants are also linked through theGulf Cooperation Council.[175] In June 2018, Qatar expressed a wish to join NATO,[176] who ruled it out, saying that only additional European countries could join according toArticle 10 of NATO's founding treaty.[177] Qatar and NATO had earlier signed a joint security agreement, in January 2018.[178]
Political dialogue with Japan began in 1990, and since then, the Alliance has gradually increased its contact with countries that do not form part of any of these cooperation initiatives.[179] In 1998, NATO established a set of general guidelines that do not allow for a formal institutionalization of relations, but reflect the Allies' desire to increase cooperation. Following extensive debate, the term "Contact Countries" was agreed by the Allies in 2000. By 2012, the Alliance had broadened this group, which meets to discuss issues such as counter-piracy and technology exchange, under the names "global partners" or "partners across the globe".[180][181] Australia and New Zealand, both contact countries, are also members of theAUSCANNZUKUS strategic alliance, and similar regional or bilateral agreements between contact countries and NATO members also aid cooperation. NATO Secretary GeneralJens Stoltenberg stated that NATO needs to "address therise of China", by closely cooperating with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.[182] Colombia is NATO's latest partner and has access to the full range of cooperative activities offered; it is the first and onlyLatin American country to cooperate with NATO.[183][184]
The North Atlantic Council convening in 2010 with a defence/foreign minister configuration
All agencies and organizations of NATO are integrated into either the civilian administrative or military executive roles. For the most part, they perform roles and functions that directly or indirectly support the security role of the alliance as a whole.[citation needed]
The civilian structure includes:
TheNorth Atlantic Council (NAC) is the body which has effective governance authority and powers of decision in NATO, consisting of member states' permanent representatives or representatives at higher level (ministers of foreign affairs or defence, or heads of state or government). The NAC convenes at least once a week and takes major decisions regarding NATO's policies. The meetings of the North Atlantic Council are chaired by thesecretary general and, when decisions have to be made, action is agreed upon by consensus.[185] There is no voting or decision by majority. Each state represented at the Council table or on any of its subordinate committees retains complete sovereignty and responsibility for its own decisions.[186]
TheNATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) is a body that sets broad strategic goals for NATO, which meets at two session per year. NATO PA interacts directly with the parliamentary structures of the national governments of the member states which appoint Permanent Members, or ambassadors to NATO. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is made up of legislators from the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance as well as thirteen associate members. It is however officially a structure different from NATO, and has as aim to join deputies of NATO countries in order to discuss security policies on the NATO Council.[187]
NATO headquarters, located on Boulevard Léopold III/Leopold III-laan, B-1110 Brussels, which is in theCity of Brussels municipality.[188] The staff at the Headquarters is composed of national delegations of member countries and includes civilian and military liaison offices and officers or diplomatic missions and diplomats of partner countries, as well as the International Staff and International Military Staff filled from serving members of the armed forces of member states.[189] Non-governmental groups have also grown up in support of NATO, broadly under the banner of theAtlantic Council/Atlantic Treaty Association movement.[190][191]
TheMilitary Committee (MC) is the body of NATO that is composed ofmember states'Chiefs of Defence (CHOD) and advises theNorth Atlantic Council (NAC) on military policy and strategy. The national CHODs are regularly represented in the MC by their permanent Military Representatives (MilRep), who often are two- or three-star flag officers. Like the council, from time to time the Military Committee also meets at a higher level, namely at the level of Chiefs of Defence, the most senior military officer in each country's armed forces. The MC is led byits chairman, who directs NATO's military operations.[192] Until 2008 the Military Committee excluded France, due to that country's 1966 decision to remove itself from theNATO Military Command Structure, which it rejoined in 1995. Until France rejoined NATO, it was not represented on the Defence Planning Committee, and this led to conflicts between it and NATO members.[193] Such was the case in the lead up toOperation Iraqi Freedom.[194]
Flags of NATO member countries outside the NATO headquarters inBrussels.
NATO is an alliance of 32 sovereign states and their individual sovereignty is unaffected by participation in the alliance. NATO has no parliaments, no laws, no enforcement, and no power to punish individual citizens. As a consequence of this lack of sovereignty the power and authority of a NATO commander are limited. NATO commanders cannot punish offences such as failure to obey a lawful order; dereliction of duty; or disrespect to a senior officer.[198] NATO commanders expect obedience but sometimes need to subordinate their desires or plans to the operators who are themselves subject to sovereign codes of conduct like theUCMJ. A case in point was the clash between GeneralSir Mike Jackson and GeneralWesley Clark overKFOR actions at Pristina Airport.[199]
NATO commanders can issue orders to their subordinate commanders in the form of operational plans (OPLANs), operational orders (OPORDERs), tactical direction, or fragmental orders (FRAGOs) and others. The joint rules of engagement must be followed, and theLaw of Armed Conflict must be obeyed at all times. Operational resources "remain under national command but have been transferred temporarily to NATO. Although these national units, through the formal process of transfer of authority, have been placed under the operational command and control of a NATO commander, they never lose their national character." Senior national representatives, likeCDS, "are designated as so-called red-cardholders". Caveats are restrictions listed "nation by nation... that NATO Commanders... must take into account".[198]
^"Final Communiqué". NATO. 17 September 1949.Archived from the original on 6 December 2006. Retrieved2 March 2024.English and French shall be the official languages for the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
^"The North Atlantic Treaty". NATO. 4 April 1949.Archived from the original on 14 September 2011. Retrieved2 March 2024.This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally authentic ...
^Erlanger, Steven (26 March 2014)."Europe Begins to Rethink Cuts to Military Spending".The New York Times.Archived from the original on 29 March 2014. Retrieved3 April 2014.Last year, only a handful of NATO countries met the target, according to NATO figures, including the United States, at 4.1 percent, and Britain, at 2.4 percent.
^Eichler, Jan (2021).NATO's Expansion After the Cold War: Geopolitics and Impacts for International Security. Springer Nature. pp. 34, 35.ISBN9783030666415.
^Techau, Jan (2 September 2015)."The Politics of 2 Percent: NATO and the Security Vacuum in Europe".Carnegie Europe. Archived fromthe original on 12 July 2018. Retrieved11 July 2018.A month before [the alliance's summit in Riga in 2006], Victoria Nuland, then the U.S. ambassador to NATO, called the 2 percent metric the "unofficial floor" on defence spending in NATO. But never had all governments of NATO's 28 nations officially embraced it at the highest possible political level – a summit declaration.
^UN DocumentA/54/549, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35: The fall of Srebrenica, un.org,Archived 12 September 2009 at theWayback Machine, accessed 25 April 2015.
^"The Kosovo refugee crisis"(PDF).United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 19 December 2005.Archived(PDF) from the original on 23 July 2023. Retrieved23 July 2023.
^"Greece 'vetoes NATO statement' on support for Turkey amid Syria escalation". 29 February 2020. Archived fromthe original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved1 March 2022.The Russian military later explained that the Syrian army targeted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorists operating in the province, adding that Syrian government forces were not informed about the Turkish presence in the area.
^George J, Teigen JM (2008). "NATO Enlargement and Institution Building: Military Personnel Policy Challenges in the Post-Soviet Context".European Security.17 (2): 346.doi:10.1080/09662830802642512.ISSN0966-2839.S2CID153420615.
^Epstein, Rachel (2006). "Nato Enlargement and the Spread of Democracy: Evidence and Expectations".Security Studies.14 (1): 63.doi:10.1080/09636410591002509.S2CID143878355.
Axelrod, Robert, and Silvia Borzutzky. "NATO and the war on terror: The organizational challenges of the post 9/11 world."Review of International Organizations 1.3 (2006): 293–307.online
Borawski, John, and Thomas-Durell Young.NATO after 2000: the future of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance (Greenwood, 2001).
Hendrickson, Ryan C. "NATO's next secretary general: Rasmussen's leadership legacy for Jens Stoltenberg."Journal of Transatlantic Studies (2016) 15#3 pp 237–251.
Sayle, Timothy Andrews.Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Cornell University Press, 2019)online review
Stevenson, Tom, "Ill-Suited to Reality" (review of Sten Rynning,NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, A History of the World's Most Powerful Alliance, Yale, March 2024,ISBN978 0 300 27011 2, 345 pp.; Peter Apps,Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO, Wildfire, February 2024,ISBN978 1 03 540575 6, 624 pp.; Grey Anderson, ed.,Natopolitanism: The Atlantic Alliance since the Cold War, Verso, July 2023,ISBN978 1 80429 237 2, 356 pp.),London Review of Books, vol. 46, no. 15 (1 August 2024), pp. 15–16, 18. "The most egregious cases of international aggression since the founding of the [NATO] alliance have all involved the US: Korea, Vietnam, theFirst Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. Yet thanks to the alliance, US-led wars have usually been defended in Europe by appealing to their righteousness.... Triumphalism about Nato has also tended to conceal the extent of US covert activity inside Europe throughout theCold War, including... in Italy... Denmark... and France... as well as in West Germany and the Netherlands.... TheCIA was heavily involved in securing the takeover of Greece by amilitary junta in 1967.... It might be cosier to imagine a world withoutCIA torture sites in Poland, Lithuania and Romania, but that isn't the world we live in.... The conditions for the creation of [NATO] were established by Britain's survival in 1940 and its role as a springboard forEisenhower's 'Crusade in Europe'. [Discussions about founding NATO began in] 1948, leading to... the 'Pentagon proposals'. Nato's founding treaty was [signed in] April 1949... [Today, t]hirty-five years after the end of the Cold War, almost a hundred thousand US military... are stationed across Europe... Another 12,500 are with theSixth Fleet in the Mediterranean....Tactical nuclear weapons are deployed... in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands... Only US officials can... order... their use." [p. 15.] "It isn't a law of nature that Dutch pilots should fly [US-made]F-35s and carry US nuclear bombs on orders from Washington." (p. 18.)
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