NATO
- INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
News: Poland row: What invoking NATO’s Article 4 means
What's
in the news?
●
NATO, the Western defensive military
alliance led by the United States, is in the eye of the storm after one of its
member nations said November 17 that a Russian missile killed two of its
citizens.
● Poland initially claimed that the missile was Russian-made, but later back-tracked, saying that the incident appears to be an “unfortunate accident” and not an “intentional attack.”
Key
takeaways:
●
In the initial reactions, Polish Prime
Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had said that the country was considering whether
it should launch NATO’s Article 4
procedure.
●
Any attack on Poland, a NATO member, could
drag the 30-nation strong alliance into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, risking a
full-fledged nuclear war.
●
Following
the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership
and were invited to join the collective by 28 of the 30 members, with Turkey
and Hungary being notable exceptions.
● Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia have expressed interest in joining the collective as well.
NATO:
●
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation, was set up in 1949 by
the US, Canada, and several western European nations to ensure their collective
security against the Soviet Union.
●
It was the US’s first peacetime military alliance outside the western hemisphere.
●
NATO's first goal was to resist Russian
expansion in Europe following WWII.
● Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of its former Eastern European partners joined NATO.
Members:
●
Thirty
countries are members of NATO currently.
○
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the
United States, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Czechia, Hungary, Poland,
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania,
Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
●
NATO is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
● The headquarters of the Allied Command Operations is near Mons, Belgium.
NATO
charter:
●
NATO is a political military alliance - Security in our daily lives is key to
our well-being. NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its
members through political and military means.
●
NATO is committed to collective defence - NATO is committed to the principle that an
attack against one or several of its members is considered as an attack against
all. The principle of collective defence, which is enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, has
been invoked once – in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States
in 2001.
●
NATO has the TransAtlantic link - NATO is an alliance of countries from Europe
and North America. It provides a unique link between these two continents,
enabling them to consult and cooperate in the field of defence and security,
and conduct multinational crisis-management operations together.
●
Finance
- NATO countries have agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.
● Democracy - To join NATO, countries must be democracies that treat minorities equitably and adhere to peaceful conflict resolution.
Important
Articles:
Article
4:
●
Article 4 of the treaty mandates that the
member nations consult each other when faced with threat.
● “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened,” it reads.
Article
5:
●
Article 5 spells out the ‘one-for-all,
all-for-one’ nature of the treaty.
● It reads: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.
Russia's
counter side:
●
When NATO came into existence, Soviet
Union had sought to counter this Western alliance with a defence collective of
its own and signed the Warsaw Pact with
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and Romania
during the Cold War.
●
However, this pact was gradually dissolved
after the war ended and its existing member nations eventually joined NATO.