Nato

Leaders of NATO member nations pose for a photo at NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 24. John Thys/AFP via Getty Images As Russia continues its attack on Ukraine, the role of NATO is at the forefront. Here's a quick overview of the alliance, the role that the United States plays within it, and what it's doing to help Ukraine amid Russia's invasion. What is NATO and why was it created? NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's a military and political alliance that was founded in 1949 in response to the actions of the Soviet Union. "The Allies in the West began to see that the Soviets were trying to take their advantage after World War II," seeking to turn countries in Central and Eastern Europe into "satellite nations" of the Soviet Union, Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO during the Obama administration, tells NPR. Townsend, who spent 30 years at the Pentagon, says during the earliest days of the Cold War, it was obvious that Russia was going to be very aggressive. So the European allies came together and asked the U.S. to join a new alliance. Dwight Eisenhower, seen here in France in 1951, was the first supreme allied commander of NATO AFP via Getty Images Which countries are in NATO? There were 12 founding members of the alliance in 1949: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. The alliance has expanded ov...

Twenty-five years ago, as a State Department speechwriter, I worked with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to secure “NATO is a military alliance, not a social club,” Albright NATO kept its door open to more members after that first expansion. We expected the biggest test would be bringing in the Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—because that would mean bringing states that had once been Soviet republics into the alliance. That Rubicon was crossed in 2004, without any serious harm to NATO-Russia relations. But I didn’t think Ukraine would ever join them. When NATO Russia’s full-scale invasion, and Ukraine’s heroic defense of NATO’s founding values, has changed all that. At the coming NATO One reason to be serious about Ukrainian membership is that experience has validated the original argument for bringing new members into NATO. In 1997, Albright Experience has also disproved the belief that nations could gain security from Russia by foregoing their aspirations for NATO membership in deference to its concerns. It’s often forgotten that Ukraine So the old reasons for Ukrainian NATO membership have become stronger; the old fears of provoking Russia have become moot. But there is also a new argument for Ukrainian membership, one that stems naturally from a question that every American and European government is now asking: How do we define Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat? If the current war were solely about sovereignty—about upholding the principle that b...

Author • Alastair Kocho-Williams Professor of History, Clarkson University Disclosure statement Alastair Kocho-Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners International concern about Russia’s Putin has built up more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, and the U.S. is Putin says he will stand down if NATO prohibits Ukraine from joining its alliance – a demand that has Understanding NATO and its history with Ukraine offers insight into the weight of this ultimatum. A poster of Russian President Vladimir Putin is used as target practice for Ukrainian soldiers. What is NATO, anyway? NATO is a military alliance NATO’s 4,200 staff members and member country embassies are headquartered on the The alliance works with the United Nations, and the two are sometimes confused – including in my classroom, But NATO does have some things in common with the U.N. Both are international organizations that participating countries But the organizations are not the same. NATO is designed to fight war, if necessary, with its military alliance. The NATO’s key, traditional principle is NATO has invoked the But NATO has used other political and legal means to justify engagement in the Kosovo War in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s and in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the 2000s. The U.S. interprets NAT...

This analysis focuses on views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) among 16 member nations and three nonmember nations in Europe and North America. In all, the analysis covers over 90% of the population living in NATO countries. Pew Research Center has been tracking views of NATO since 2007. This report also includes views of Article 5 obligations, which state that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all; preferences for close relations with the U.S. versus with Russia; support for the use of military force to maintain order in the world; and agreement with the sentiment that parts of neighboring countries belong to another country. For this report, we used data from a survey conducted across 19 countries from May 13 to Aug. 12, 2019, among 21,029 respondents. The surveys were conducted face-to-face in Central and Eastern Europe, Greece, Italy, Russia and Ukraine. Surveys were conducted over the phone in North America and Western Europe. Here are the NATO is generally seen in a positive light across publics within the alliance, despite lingering Positive ratings of NATO among members range from a high of 82% in Poland to 21% in Turkey, with the United States and Germany in the middle at 52% and 57%, respectively. And in the three nonmember states surveyed, Sweden and Ukraine see the alliance positively (63% and 53%, respectively), but only 16% of Russians say the same. Favorable views of the organization have fluctuated over time among both NATO memb...

In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. The alignment of nearly every European nation into one of the two opposing camps formalized the political division of the European continent that had taken place since A Divided Europe Conflict between the Western nations (including the United States, Great Britain, France and other countries) and the Communist Eastern bloc (led by the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics or USSR) began almost as soon as the guns fell silent at the end of World War II (1939-45). The USSR oversaw the installation of pro-Soviet governments in many of the areas it had taken from the Nazis during the war. In response, the U.S. and its Western allies sought ways to prevent further expansion of Communist influence on the European continent. In 1947, U.S. leaders introduced the Events of the following year prompted American leaders to adopt a more militaristic stance toward the Soviets. In February 1948, a coup sponsored by the Did you know? NATO continued its existence beyond the Cold War era and gained new member nations in Eastern Europe during the late 1990s. That development was not well received by leaders of the Russian Federation and became a source of post-Cold War tension between the East and the West. N...