NATO

A military alliance whose central promise has been invoked exactly once, and not by the country everyone expected. NATO was founded in 1949 by twelve states as a response to Soviet pressure in Europe, and its first secretary general reportedly described its purpose as keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Article 5 commits members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all, though the wording leaves each member to decide what action it thinks necessary - a deliberate softening required to get it through the American Senate. It was invoked for the first and only time on 12 September 2001, by European members on behalf of the United States. The alliance fought no war during the Cold War at all; its first combat operations came in Bosnia in the 1990s and then Kosovo in 1999, conducted without a Security Council mandate, and its longest campaign was in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2021. France withdrew from the integrated command structure in 1966 and returned in 2009. Enlargement eastwards after 1999 became the central Russian grievance in European security. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought Finland and Sweden in, ending decades of neutrality and roughly doubling the alliance's land border with Russia. Members commit to spending two per cent of national output on defence. Its headquarters is in Brussels. Thirty-two states are now members. The alliance was founded by the Washington Treaty in April 1949. Its headquarters has been in Brussels since 1967. Its combined membership holds around a billion people. The North Atlantic Council is its principal decision-making body and works by consensus.

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