Everyone has heard about this intergovernmental international organization and the world's largest military-political union. Collective security of the participating countries - this is the basic principle of the alliance under the name of NATO. The list of countries included in it currently totals 28 states. All of them are located exclusively in two parts of the world - in North America and in Europe.
Goals, tasks and organization structure
NATO (the abbreviation of the English "North Atlantic Treaty Organization") is an international organization of the countries of Europe and North America. The main goal of the military-political alliance is to ensure freedom and military security of all the countries participating in the union. All activities of this structure are based on democratic values and freedoms, as well as on the principles of the rule of law.
The organization is based on the principle of collective security of states. In other words, in the event of aggression or military invasion of one of the member countries of the alliance, other NATO members are required to jointly respond to this military threat. Also, the alliance's activity is manifested in the regular holding of joint military exercises of the armies of the participating countries.
The organization structure is represented by three main bodies. It:
- North Atlantic Council;
- Defense planning committee;
- Nuclear Planning Committee.
The NATO member countries cooperate not only in the military field, but also in other areas of society, such as ecology, science, emergency situations and so on.
An integral part of the alliance's work is consultation between its members. So, any decision is made only by consensus. That is, each of the participating countries must vote for one or another decision of the organization. Sometimes discussion of certain issues drags on for a long time, but almost always NATO was able to reach consensus.
The history of the creation and expansion of the alliance
The formation of the military-political alliance began almost immediately after the end of World War II. Historians call the two main reasons that made the heads of leading powers think about a new security system. The first is the threat of revenge of Nazi movements in post-war Germany, and the second is the active spread by the Soviet Union of its influence in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe.
As a result, the so-called North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949, which marked the beginning of the formation of a new alliance under the acronym NATO. The list of countries that signed this document totaled 12 states. They became the USA, Canada, France, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, Iceland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. They are considered the founders of this powerful military-political bloc.
In subsequent years, other states joined the NATO bloc. The largest replenishment in the alliance took place in 2004, when 7 East European states became new NATO members. Currently, the geography of the alliance continues to move east. So, recently, the heads of countries such as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine spoke about their intention to join NATO.
It should be noted that during the Cold War, the image of NATO was deliberately demonized by Soviet propaganda. The USSR artificially made the alliance its main enemy. This explains the rather low support for the bloc’s policies in a number of post-Soviet states.
NATO: list of countries and geography of the alliance
Which states are part of this international organization today? So, all NATO countries (for 2014) are listed below in chronological order of their entry into the alliance:
- United States of America;
- Canada;
- France;
- Portugal;
- Kingdom of Norway;
- Kingdom of Belgium;
- United Kingdom;
- Kingdom of Denmark;
- Italy;
- Iceland;
- Netherlands;
- Duchy of Luxembourg;
- Turkey;
- Hellenic Republic
- Federal Republic of Germany;
- Spain;
- Republic of Poland;
- Czech Republic;
- Hungary;
- Republic of Bulgaria;
- Romania;
- Slovakia;
- Slovenia;
- Estonia;
- Latvia;
- Lithuania;
- Croatia;
- Republic of Albania.
The military-political union includes exclusively European countries, as well as two states of North America. Below you can see how all the NATO countries are located on the world map.
