Global Dynamics of National Security: Alliances and Resources - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato)

On April 4, 1949, the United States and Canada signed the North Atlantic Treaty. This entered them into a political and military alliance with ten European nations: Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was essentially created to protect Europe from potential Soviet aggression and create a balance of power between the communist and democratic states. In 1952 Greece and Turkey joined the treaty, followed by the Republic of Germany, which joined in 1955. In 1982 Spain became a member of NATO. After communism fell in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and 1990s, NATO expanded its membership rapidly, starting with the reunified Germany in 1990. By 1999 member states also included the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. On March 29, 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia also joined the organization, the largest round of enlargement in NATO's history. As of 2004 three countries—Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia—were in the process of meeting NATO standards for possible future membership.

NATO is primarily a multinational alliance, promoting collective defense while allowing states to maintain their individual sovereignty. According to the NATO handbook, NATO has the following fundamental tasks:

• It provides an indispensable foundation for a stable security environment in Europe, based on the growth of democratic institutions and commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes. It seeks to create an environment in which no country would be able to intimidate or coerce any European nation or to impose hegemony (leadership or dominance of one state over another) through the threat or use of force.
• It serves as a transatlantic forum for allied consultations on any issues affecting the vital interests of its members, including developments that might pose risks to their security.
• It provides deterrence and defense against any form of aggression against the territory of any NATO member state.
• It preserves a strategic balance in Europe.

These security undertakings have gone through a transformation since the 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO had to redefine its security goals to fit the changing security environment. After the Prague Summit of 2002, it developed a list of points that helped the organization shift its strategies to better fit the new millennium. The highlights of the list, as posted on the NATO Web site, include:

• The NATO Response Force will be a technologically advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable (able to operate between different branches and locations), and sustainable force including land, sea, and air elements ready to move quickly to wherever needed.
• NATO's command structure will be made leaner, more efficient, more effective, and more deployable, in order to meet the operational requirements for the full range of NATO missions. There will be two strategic commands: one operational (the strategic command for Operations, based in Europe) and one functional (the strategic command for Transformation, based in the United States).
• In the Prague Capabilities Commitment, individual allies have made firm and specific political commitments to improve their capabilities in areas key to modern military operations, such as strategic air-and-sea lift and air-to-ground surveillance.
• To defend against new threats like terrorism, five specific initiatives in the area of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons defense were endorsed to enhance NATO's defense capabilities against such weapons. NATO's defense against cyber attacks will be strengthened, and a missile defense feasibility study will be initiated.