The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established by the United States and much of Europe after the Soviet Union (Russia) invaded parts of Eastern Europe after World War II. Use for questions about the organization and the politics surrounding it.
Questions tagged [nato]
193 questions
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Is NATO obliged to invoke Article 5 if one of its members attacks another member?
Turkey is currently doing a lot of posturing against the EU in general and its neighbor Greece in particular. Assuming Turkey were to attack Greece, is NATO obliged to invoke Article 5 (Collective defence)? Is this something defined within the NATO…
JonathanReez
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Are NATO countries obliged to meet their 2% defence spending targets?
Why do most NATO members fail to spend the agreed target of 2% of GDP on defense? Could the member states that do meet the target do anything about this?
Curious
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Why was the 2% threshold specifically chosen as the target for NATO spending?
A lot of ink has been spilled on the issue of NATO spending and how certain members fail to fulfill the 2% of GDP spending threshold. But why was the 2% number specifically chosen? E.g. why not 5% of the government budget or 3% of GNP or 1.5% of…
JonathanReez
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Which territories exactly trigger the joint defense clause as defined in article 6 of the NATO charter?
The best-known article of the NATO charter is article 5 that defines that an attack on any NATO country should be considered an attack on all of them. But article 6 sets some geographic limitations that unfortunately might be relevant today:
NATO…
Mad Scientist
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Is an attack on the leader of a NATO country whilst outside NATO considered an attack on NATO, and thus a trigger to Article 5?
Leaders of 3 NATO countries are going to Kyiv to meet the president of Ukraine. Parts of Kyiv are currently under missile and artillery attack from Russia.
If one or more leaders of a NATO country are killed or injured by an attack while outside of…
stevec
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Does NATO see itself as a defensive alliance?
Why would Russia invade Ukraine?
With polls showing that a large majority of Ukrainians would like their country to become a member of the organisation, the Kremlin wants the west to promise that Ukraine will never join Nato, something the…
Allure
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Internal NATO Conflicts
This answer here makes reference to there being no obligation for NATO members to defend eachother under article 5 if the agressors are both members of the treaty.
Having read the article in question, an attack on one shall be considered an attack…
ScottishTapWater
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Was there any talk or initiative made to introduce a formal process for suspending or terminating membership from NATO?
But the North Atlantic Treaty regulating NATO does not have an option
to suspend or even expel members. But there's the possibility to do
something to the same effect when a member state persistently violates
the principles contained in the pact—by…
Sayaman
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How is consensus enforced within NATO?
As NATO gets bigger, especially given the recent war in Ukraine, it would seem that it would get more and more difficult to maintain a diplomatic consensus, seeing as the more members there are, the more scope there is for disagreement.
How does…
komodosp
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Why does the subject of 2% of GDP for NATO became so important in 2017?
On 9th of June 2017, Donald Trump and the Romanian President had a meeting and a press conference. During their final discourses, they repeated almost obsessively about 2% of GDP for defense with NATO, countries not meeting this threshold, how few…
Alexei
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Is there a law that explicitly forbids ex-NATO members from rejoining if they left to avoid going to war because of Article 5?
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm
Collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered
as an attack against all Allies.
What prevents a member country to leave NATO to not have to go to war against a country…
Sayaman
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What are the conditions of NATO Article 5 invocation?
If a NATO member nation flagrantly and unjustifiably provokes attack by various means, can that nation then invoke Article 5? Or does that become a choice for each other NATO member nation to decide whether or not to defend them?
Edit: I'm asking…
colelewis
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