NATO is an abbreviation that stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which is a military alliance that includes the U.S, Canada, the U.K and France along with 8 other countries, formed in 1949.
NATO was formed to counter the threat from the Soviet Union after the Second World War. In response, the U.S.S.R built its own military alliance against NATO in 1955. It was called the Warsaw Pact. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved and some of its member countries joined NATO.
The NATO alliance now has a total of 30 member countries with the goal to carry out the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed on April 4, 1949. NATO constitutes a system of collective security. In this system, an attack on one member state is considered as an attack on all and it calls for a collective response. This guarantees collective security for all NATO member states. NATO’s headquarters are in Brussels in Belgium.
2 North American countries, 27 European countries and 1 Eurasian country form the NATO. On March 20, 2020 North Macedonia, with a population of two million people, became the newest and the 30th member of NATO. The U.S.A contributes around three-fourths of NATO’s total budget.
Another striking fact is that NATO played a prominent part in the current conflicts between Russia and Ukraine indirectly.
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