NATO
- INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
News:
Will more NATO support
increase tensions in Asia?
What's
in the news?
●
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
began a four-day trip to South Korea and Japan over the weekend, addressing
military threats from China and North Korea, while seeking to deepen the
alliance’s political ties with its top Asian allies.
NATO:
●
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation, was set up in 1949 by
the US, Canada, and several western European nations to ensure their collective
security against the Soviet Union.
●
It was the US’s first peacetime military alliance outside the western hemisphere.
●
NATO's first goal was to resist Russian
expansion in Europe following WWII.
●
Following the demise of the Soviet Union
in 1991, several of its former Eastern European partners joined NATO.
Members:
●
Thirty
countries are members of NATO currently.
○
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the
United States, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Czechia, Hungary, Poland,
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania,
Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
●
NATO is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
●
The headquarters of the Allied Command
Operations is near Mons, Belgium.
NATO
charter:
●
NATO is a political military alliance - Security in our daily lives is key to
our well-being. NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its
members through political and military means.
●
NATO is committed to collective defence - NATO is committed to the principle that an
attack against one or several of its members is considered as an attack against
all. The principle of collective defence, which is enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, has
been invoked once – in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United
States in 2001.
●
NATO has the Trans-Atlantic link - NATO is an alliance of countries from Europe
and North America. It provides a unique link between these two continents,
enabling them to consult and cooperate in the field of defence and security,
and conduct multinational crisis-management operations together.
●
Finance
- NATO countries have agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.
●
Democracy
- To join NATO, countries must be democracies that treat minorities equitably
and adhere to peaceful conflict resolution.
Important
Articles:
Article
4:
●
Article 4 of the treaty mandates that the
member nations consult each other when faced with threat.
●
“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,” it reads.
Article
5:
●
Article 5 spells out the ‘one-for-all,
all-for-one’ nature of the treaty.
●
It reads: “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.
Russia's
counter side:
●
When NATO came into existence, Soviet
Union had sought to counter this Western alliance with a defence collective of
its own and signed the Warsaw Pact with
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and Romania
during the Cold War.
●
However, this pact was gradually dissolved
after the war ended and its existing member nations eventually joined NATO.