After years of neutrality, Finland on Tuesday becomes the 31st member of NATO, the world’s largest military alliance founded by the United States and 11 other countries after World War II. Congratulations on the occasion on Twitter, among others. President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. We recall the most important events in NATO’s history.
Congratulations Poland
Finland already a member of NATO! Congratulations!
As of now, the alliance has 31 countries. Strong partners are a guarantee of security for Poland, the region and the whole world.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter
Andrzej Duda also congratulated the new member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
NATO may be 74, it certainly feels 31! Hello Finland! Ei koskaan enää yksin – never alone again. Together we are stronger! Poland is counting on Sweden’s rapid accession to NATO
– also wrote the President of the Republic of Poland on Twitter.
74 years of history
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was founded in 1949 and its first members were the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal.
During the first expansion, Greece and Türkiye joined the alliance in 1952. Three years later, West Germany joined NATO, and in response the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European countries formed the Warsaw Pact.
NATO’s goal, as its first Secretary General, Hastings Lionel Ismay, put it, was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” According to the first point of this principle, the European allies of the US took refuge under the nuclear umbrella of the US, which was necessary given the predominance of the Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. The creation of the pact guaranteed that American troops would remain in Europe.
The basis of the alliance is the principle that an attack on one of the members is considered an attack on all – compared to the “d’Artagnan principle” of “The Three Musketeers”, that is, “One for all, all for one”. In NATO, it is stated in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which in the event of aggression against a member state obliges the others “to assist the country attacked by taking immediately, individually or with other countries, such measures as they necessary, including the use of military force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Spain joined NATO in 1982 during the Cold War. At the end of this era, about 900,000 soldiers were stationed in Germany. Allied soldiers, nearly half of whom were American troops.
After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact
After the collapse of the USSR and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, voices appeared in the US for the self-liquidation of the alliance in the face of the disappearance of the earlier threat. The option of strengthening the political dimension of NATO, which would become the guardian of stability in Europe, won; it was also a way of involving former members of the Soviet bloc in the community of liberal democratic countries.
NATO’s operations in the Balkans in the 1990s fulfilled the role of a stabilizer of the international order. Air raids on Bosnian Serb positions led to the Armistice of the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Peace of Dayton. The bombing of Serbia in 1999 led to the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.
The idea of further NATO expansion initially found no support in the US. Most media and foreign policy experts opposed it. They argued that the accession of Eastern European countries to NATO would ruin cooperation with Russia.
The US political establishment became convinced of NATO expansion as democratic reforms in Poland and other aspiring countries progressed. In July 1997, the leaders of the NATO countries invited Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to Madrid. Moscow’s fears were allayed by the creation of the NATO-Russia Council. In 1998, the United States Senate ratified the amendment to the Washington Treaty necessary for the expansion, and on March 12, 1999, the three countries in question became members of the alliance.
The enlargement process is still ongoing
The enlargement process continues today. Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were admitted to NATO in 2004, and Albania and Croatia in 2009. Montenegro joined in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.
The provisions of Article 5 on the common defense of the country under attack were first implemented after al-Qaeda’s attack on the US on September 11, 2001. The invasion of Afghanistan, where the head of this terrorist organization, Osama bin Laden, went into hiding occurred as an action by a coalition of alliance forces commanded by the US. The 2011 NATO mission in Libya, which accelerated the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship, was of a similar nature. In the new strategic doctrine, the alliance announced that it was now undertaking operations “outside the area” of its original operation, namely Europe and North America, thus becoming a global alliance.
In response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, a very high level of preparedness, capable of responding in just days, was created, commonly referred to as the NATO spearhead. Since their inception, they have functioned as part of Russia’s deterrence strategy. They consist of military personnel on high alert, deputed in rotation by member states. These soldiers remain in their home units, but must be able to go anywhere a spearhead is needed within 48-72 hours.
A new chapter after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
With the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, NATO returned to its original role as a shield against external aggression.
The Alliance Headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium, and the NATO Allied Operations Command is located in Mons, Belgium.
Pact structure
The combined forces of all NATO members comprise approximately 3.5 million soldiers and servicemen. Total member military spending in 2020 accounted for more than 57 percent. global sum. In addition, member states agreed to reach or maintain defense spending of at least 2% of their GDP by 2024.
NATO’s structure has two divisions. The civilian section includes: The North Atlantic Council, made up of representatives of the NATO countries, and for the military division: the NATO Military Committee, which makes recommendations to the North Atlantic Council on military strategies, the Allied Command Operations responsible for NATO military operations, and Allied Command Transformation which deals with defense planning and military capability development.
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rm/PAP
Source: wPolityce