North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)

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• Recently, Russia has said it will be forced to take “retaliatory steps” over its neighbour Finland’s move to join NATO.

About North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 1949 

• Established in: 1949
• Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium
• India is not a member country of NATO.
• It is an intergovernmental military alliance (also called the Washington Treaty) between 30 countries across the world including the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
• Members: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999, followed in 2004 by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the following years, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia also became members, bringing NATO membership to 30 nations.
• Military Objective: It is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations.
• Political Objective: It promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
• A key provision of the treaty is Article 5. It states that if one member of the alliance is attacked in Europe or North America, it is to be considered an attack on all members. That effectively put Western Europe under the “nuclear umbrella” of the US.

Source: TH