NATO is a political and military alliance established to promote collective security and cooperation among member nations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO for short, is a military alliance that was formed back in 1949. Its main goal was to provide a counterbalance to the Soviet forces that were positioned in central and eastern Europe after World War II. After the Cold War ended, NATO redefined its purpose and became a “cooperative-security” organization. Today, it consists of 32 member countries.
In 2001, NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time ever, in response to the horrific September 11 attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, which led to the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., resulting in the tragic loss of about 3,000 lives. Article 6 specifies that the treaty’s geographic scope includes “an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America.” The other articles focus on the allies’ commitment to strengthening their democratic institutions, enhancing their collective military capabilities, consulting with one another, and keeping the door open for other European countries to join. When NATO was founded in 1949, its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The countries that joined NATO after its founding are Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); North Macedonia (2020); Finland (2023); and Sweden (2024).