Short for North Atlantic Treaty Organization according to abbreviationfinder, NATO is an international political and military organization that brings together a total of 28 countries. The signatories of the Brussels Treaty, the United States and Canada, as well as five other Western European countries invited to participate, join this organization. NATO’s headquarters are in Mons, Brussels and that of its military command in Belgium. NATO has the largest nuclear arsenal in history, enough to destroy the world.
History
the beginning
In 1947, the French and British had signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, still targeting Germany. In March 1948, under the North American advice, the Treaty of Brussels was initialed, signed by France, Great Britain and the Benelux countries. This treaty was aimed at encircling the Soviet Union.
Then another step was taken aimed at isolating the USSR and taking advantage of the situation offered by the blockade of Berlin that Stalin ‘s troops carried out in 1948. On June 11, 1948, the North American Congress approved the Vandemberg resolution, which allowed the power executive conclude alliances in times of peace.
Finally, the North Atlantic Treaty or Atlantic Alliance was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949. It was signed by twelve countries (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Portugal). In 1952, Turkey and Greece receiving US funding through the Marshall Plan, agreed to the Pact; the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 and finally Spain in 1982.
Article 5 is the key to this treaty as it specifies that in the event of an aggression against a member state, its members are committed to taking the necessary measures, including the use of armed force, to restore and ensure security in the North Atlantic region..
In 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, a permanent military structure, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was created. Although they are not exactly the same, Atlantic Alliance and NATO are used as synonymous terms.
The Soviet response to the serious threat NATO posed to its security was the creation of the Warsaw Pact, signed on May 14, 1955, by the Soviet Union and the socialist states of Eastern Europe.
Internal conflicts
NATO’s unity has been in evidence since its inception. In 1958, de Gaulle protested the hegemonic role of the United States in the Organization, and what the president understood was a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmillan on September 17, 1958, he argued in favor of the creation of a tripartite leadership, which would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, also advocating the NATO expansion in the geographical areas of interest to France, such as Algeria, where France was trying to maintain colonialism and for that it needed NATO’s help.
De Gaulle considered the answers given as unsatisfactory, so he decided to build an independent defense for his country. On March 11, 1959, France withdrew its Mediterranean fleet from NATO command; three months later, in June 1959, de Gaulle prohibited the entry of foreign nuclear weapons into French territory.
In 1966, the French armed forces were withdrawn from NATO’s integrated command, and all non-French troops were ordered to leave French territory. France rejoined the Military Committee in 1995 and its president Nicolas Sarkozy approved its return to NATO.
CIA connections
The United States led NATO to support paramilitary and terrorist groups. In Italy, he aligned himself with state and right-wing political factions, with secret societies (Propaganda Due [P-2]) and with paramilitary groups that, with the cooperation of the police, followed what was called a “strategy of tension” in which they carried out a series of terrorist actions for which the left was blamed. The most famous was the Bologna station bombing in August 1980 that killed 86 people. The training and integration into NATO-police operations of ex-fascists and fascist collaborators was extraordinary in Italy, but common to all parts of Europe.
NATO was also related to “Operation Gladio”, a program organized by the CIA, with the collaboration of governments and NATO security agencies, which in many European states organized secret cadres and hid weapons, supposedly prepared for the threat of Soviet invasion, but actually prepared for “internal subversion” and available to support right-wing coups. They were used many times by right-wing paramilitary groups to carry out terrorist operations (including the Bologna bombing and many terrorist incidents in Belgium and Germany).
Gladio and NATO plans were also used to fight the “internal threat” in Greece in 1967, namely the democratic election of a liberal government. In response, the Greek military implemented a NATO “Prometheus Plan” that substituted a democratic order for a torturing military dictatorship. Neither NATO nor the US government objected. Other Gladio forces from Italy and elsewhere went to Greece for training during their fascist interlude, to learn how to deal with “internal subversion.”
Post-Soviet NATO
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Warsaw Pact, the theoretical base of NATO disappeared. Fraudulent though these bases were, NATO still needed to redefine its reason for existing and quickly adopted a broader and more aggressive role as well.
Yugoslav War
The origins of the Yugoslav War date back to 1979 when the BND (the equivalent of the German CIA) sent to Zagreb a team of secret agents whose mission was to support Franjo Tudjman, a racist who actively spreads ethnic hatred and preaches breakup of Yugoslavia.
At the beginning of the Maastricht summit in 1991, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the only one who wanted to break up Yugoslavia and hastily recognize the “independence” of Slovenia and Croatia, disregarding international law and the Yugoslav Constitution, a position with which they aligned themselves France and the UK.
Between 1992 and 1995, the United States promoted the prolongation of the war in Bosnia with the aim of preventing the Germans from taking control of Slovenia, Croatia and soon Bosnia. They would thus succeed in preventing Berlin from consolidating itself in the Balkans while managing to divide and weaken the European Union. NATO was established as a European gendarme and Russia lost its access to the Mediterranean.
As a pretext to start the war, an alleged “ethnic cleansing” that Yugoslav President Slodoban Milosevic was carrying out in Yugoslavia against Kosovar Albanians was promoted in the media. Milosevic however disapproved of the excesses committed by the Serb militias in Bosnia and his wife made many statements against them.
Between July 1998 and March 1999, the justification for a war for humanitarian reasons is being prepared. NATO, under pressure from the United States, which needed an urgent justification in the face of its public opinion, increasingly opposed to the war, brought the complaint against Milosevic before the International Criminal Court of the former Yugoslavia on May 22, 1999, on the basis of secret and confidential NATO database, without specifying the basis for the accusations.
On March 24, 1999, after the United States instructed NATO to initiate armed action, the latter began a criminal bombing of Yugoslavia until June 11, 1999. The operation, named Allied Force, was carried out unilaterally by NATO, without prior authorization from the UN Security Council, [1] so it has been considered that the bombings constituted acts of war crimes. [2] Intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Jean Bricmont condemned the attack, maintaining that it constituted a violation of the Charter of the United Nations. [3]
war in afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan marked the transformation of NATO into a fighting machine for global warfare. NATO officials now use terms such as global NATO, expeditionary NATO, and 21st century NATO.
The invasion of Afghanistan, called ” Enduring Freedom ” took place in 2001 by the United States Armed Forces. In December of the same year, the UN convened a Conference in Bonn, Germany, to constitute a provisional government made up of the various Afghan factions, with the exception of the Taliban. The International Security Assistance Forces [4] (ISAF) were also created “to assist the Afghan transitional authority, promote a secure environment and support the reconstruction of the country, first in Kabul and later in the rest of the territory.” When in August 2003NATO assumed command of ISAF, the Alliance had about 5,000 troops, deployed mainly in Kabul, which now number about 120,000, distributed throughout the territory, from 46 countries, including its 28 allies.
NATO also increased its Mediterranean dialogue, whose interlocutors are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia; and since the 2004 NATO summit in Turkey, with the so-called Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, they also placed military infrastructure in the 6 members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, of which the last named is the only Arab state that to date has troops in Afghanistan.
The Afghan war has led to another category of NATO partnership, called Contact Countries, which so far officially include Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.
The Alliance also has a Tripartite Commission with Afghanistan and Pakistan for the prosecution of a dangerous expansion of the war in South Asia and called on the defense, military and political leaders of both nations to participate regularly in NATO leadership meetings and directories. in Belgium. They train Afghan and Pakistani soldiers at NATO bases in Europe.
Military intervention in Libya
On March 19, 2011 [ 5] within the framework of Resolution 1973 of the UN Security Council on a no-fly zone in Libya, NATO member countries begin an air attack against that country. In its beginnings, the commander of the operation was the United States, who called it Odyssey of the Dawn. On March 24, the transfer of command of military operations to NATO was announced after a meeting between the United States, France and Great Britain [6].
Between March 20 and 23 of the same month, after invading NATO troops, at least 114 people died and 445 were injured, declared the head of the Libyan Ministry of Health Khaled Omar [7]. From the start of operations until April 3, NATO reported that a total of 276 air missions had been carried out against targets in the North African country. [8]
Expansion and changes
NATO’s 40th anniversary summit in Washington, DC, 1999, welcomed the first expansion of the world’s only military bloc in the post-Cold War era, with the absorption of former Warsaw Pact “enemies,” the Republic of Czech, Hungary and Poland.
All new members were prepared for their full accession to NATO under the “Partnership for Peace” program, which requires interoperability between arms; they increased the military spending of the future members to 2% of their national budget regardless of how it affects the signatory nation economically; they purged “politically unreliable” personnel from the military, defense, and security forces; gave training at NATO military academies abroad; they hosted US and Alliance military exercises, and trained the officer corps in a common language – English – for joint operations overseas.
“Oppression, ethnic conflict” and “proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” are the supposed main concerns of the new NATO. Despite this, its relations with Israel are close and it has not impeded in any way Israel’s oppression and ethnic cleansing nor its semi-recognized and considerable nuclear arsenal, and, of course, neither the war waged by Israel against Israel. Lebanon in 2006.
The “new” NATO supports and contributes to the US project of encircling and threatening Russia, while carrying out joint military maneuvers with the countries of the so-called Mediterranean Dialogue.
NATO is actually an aggressive global army of the United States and other affiliated local imperialisms and poses a serious threat to global peace and security.
member states
| Date | Country | Expansion | Grades |
| April 4, 1949 | Belgium | founders | |
| April 4, 1949 | Canada | [9] | |
| April 4, 1949 | Denmark | ||
| April 4, 1949 | USA | ||
| April 4, 1949 | France | France withdrew from the NATO military structure in 1966 under Charles de Gaulle, [10] rejoining in 2009 under President Nicolas Sarkozy. [eleven] | |
| April 4, 1949 | Iceland | Iceland, the only NATO member that does not possess a military force of its own (its defense was ensured by the Icelandic Defense Forces, which were led by the United States and based in Keflavík), joined on the condition that it would not be forced. to participate in any war event. | |
| April 4, 1949 | Italy | ||
| April 4, 1949 | Luxembourg | ||
| April 4, 1949 | Norway | ||
| April 4, 1949 | Holland | ||
| April 4, 1949 | Portugal | ||
| April 4, 1949 | United Kingdom | ||
| February 18, 1952 | Greece | First | Greece withdrew its troops from the NATO military structure between 1974 and 1980 due to tensions between Greece and Turkey in 1974. |
| February 18, 1952 | Turkey | ||
| May 9, 1955 | Germany | Second | Germany joined as the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, and the unified Germany of 1990 extended its participation to areas of the former German Democratic Republic. |
| May 30, 1982 | Spain | Third | On March 12, 1986, a referendum was held to ask the Spanish if they were in favor of joining. [12] |
| March 12, 1999 | Hungary | Quarter | |
| March 12, 1999 | Poland | ||
| March 12, 1999 | Czech Republic | ||
| March 29, 2004 | Bulgaria | fifth | |
| March 29, 2004 | Slovakia | ||
| March 29, 2004 | Slovenia | ||
| March 29, 2004 | Estonia | ||
| March 29, 2004 | latvia | ||
| March 29, 2004 | Lithuania | ||
| March 29, 2004 | Romania | ||
| April 1, 2009 | Croatia | Sixth | |
| April 1, 2009 | Albanian | ||
| June 5, 2017 | Montenegrin | Seventh |
