The Civics Project: What's NATO?
Q. What is NATO and what does it mean for our role in Ukraine?
A. NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is a defensive military alliance formed in 1949, following World War II, to protect the democratic nations of the West against potential aggression from the Soviet Union. Beyond mutual protection, the signatory nations created a framework organization that would coordinate their military defense and established a headquarters in Europe. The leader of the alliance is called the Secretary Genera, currently Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg.
In the aftermath of World War II, there was understandable concern that the Soviet Union would threaten democratically elected governments in Europe. The Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin in 1948, which was memorably circumvented by the U.S. led Berlin Airlift, is an example of the difficult tension between east and west at the time. While the main purpose of the alliance was deterring Soviet expansion from eastern Europe, it also served a broader effort to encourage transatlantic cooperation and discourage militant nationalism from arising again.
Initially, NATO was just 12 nations — the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Luxembourg, and the United States. The Soviet Union responded to NATO by forming the Warsaw Pact, making clear the division between eastern and western Europe. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO expanded to include former members of the Warsaw Pact, such as Poland and Hungary. The former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined NATO in 2004. Today NATO consists of 30 nations.
The central principle of NATO is collective defense and the most well-known provision of the NATO alliance is Article 5. Each of the signatories to Article 5 agrees that “an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all.”
In the long history of NATO, Article 5 has only been invoked once. Within a day of the attacks of 9/11, the NATO Secretary General invoked Article 5 bringing the alliance and its member nations to the defense of the United States. Among several measures taken, NATO aircraft patrolled the skies over the U.S. during the aftermath of 9/11, piloted by crews from 13 different NATO countries. Subsequently, NATO forces also were deployed to Afghanistan under the United Nations Security Council mandate.
Ukraine has participated in NATO activities and has long sought to be brought into the alliance. Ukraine began the process of obtaining membership in 2008. The delay in adding Ukraine might have been in part related to concern from member states about how Russia (the primary successor state to the Soviet Union) would respond. Russia has opposed the expansion of NATO. As of now, Ukraine is not part of NATO and thus is not protected under the mutual defense provisions of Article 5.
Kevin Wagner is a noted constitutional scholar and political science professor at Florida Atlantic University. The answers provided do not necessarily represent the views of the university. If you have a question about how American government and politics work, email him at kwagne15@fau.edu or reach him on Twitter @kevinwagnerphd.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: A civics lesson: What is NATO and what does it mean for U.S., Ukraine?
