Our best allies? Name ONE!

Like your boy Obama who gave a state sponsor of terror Billions in cash! Was that your idea of the kind of allies that we need?

So sad... Everyone getting paid at NATO and the USA is footing the major part of the bill... Meanwhile Fish Lips Xi is running around pushing the Silk Road all for China one belt program but they are damn sure going to make people know they run the show by making them all sign agreements that the south China sea belongs to them, and in exchange China is going to build them transit lines to import their cheap Chinese goods so that these member nations can keep paying China! India was right about China and how their country is imploding! In fact Moodys just downgraded China's credit today, the first time since 1989! I call that WINNING!

You people... I don't know what to think of ya! It's about time someone said something to NATO! If we are paying more we should have more influence, more benefits! This whole let the USA pay more and allow other nations to have an equal say is BULL$HIT! That's not the way the world works PowerStroker and you know it!

Well said Rastus, yes it seems any organization that protects us from Russian aggression is pointless now that we have a Russian puppet in the White House. So we may as well save all that money, abolish NATO, and fly the Russian flag proudly in front of Rex's house.

Hello folks,

I've posted a small but thorough review of NATO, & what it actually has stood for all these years, so SELLC at the least can see why a Russian flag might-as-well-be flying on his pole..
I doubt Mr.Trump cares enough about it, as he's looking for war. Yet still, somewhere there lies hope...but at the most, it's still 3-1/2 years away...

Ironically, Mr.Trump is making America a lesser country, & a lesser force. His blatant arrogance for himself, will only ensure his pockets are lined, & yours emptied...( I guess some-one has to feed Stoma Jr., & pay for college )...


North Atlantic Treaty Organization


I INTRODUCTION

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also known as Organisation du Traite de lAtlantique Nord (OTAN), regional defence alliance, formed under Article 9 of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4, 1949. The original signatories were Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. Greece and Turkey were admitted to the alliance in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. NATOs original purpose was to enhance the stability, well-being, and freedom of its members by means of a system of collective security. In 1990 the newly unified Germany replaced West Germany as a NATO member. In March 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland formally joined NATO, marking the first admission of former Communist states of the old Soviet bloc to NATO. Whether or not NATO should continue to expand into former Soviet-controlled areas remains a controversial question. Another debate in NATO in the aftermath of the Cold War concerns to what extent it should convert itself from a purely defensive arrangement for its members own territory into a peacekeeping organization prepared to intervene elsewhere, as it has in the former Yugoslavia.

II BACKGROUND

In the years after World War II, many Western leaders saw the policies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as threatening the stability and peace of Europe. The forcible installation of Communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, territorial expansion by the USSR, and its support of guerrilla war in Greece and regional separatism in Iran, appeared to many as the first steps in new aggression that might lead to another world war. Subsequent events, including deterioration of the situation in Greece and the near collapse of war-devastated European economies during the winter of 1946-1947, led the United States to two important initiatives: the European Economic Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, which the Eastern Europeans rejected under Soviet compulsion; and the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine. This, although directed at the situation in Greece and Turkey, contained a generalized pledge to help any nation defending its freedom and democracy. Led by the United Kingdom and its foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, Western European countries hastened to seize this opportunity and formed the Western Union defensive alliance by the Brussels Treaty of 1948. This willingness to stand together and the Soviet-instigated Blockade of Berlin, which began in March 1948, stimulated negotiations that culminated in the North Atlantic Treaty of Washington in April 1949.

III TREATY PROVISIONS

The treaty consists of a preamble and 14 articles. The preamble states its purpose: to promote the common values of its members and to unite their efforts for collective defence. Article 1 calls for peaceful resolution of disputes. Article 2 pledges the parties to economic and political cooperation. Article 3 calls for development of the capacity for defence. Article 4 provides for joint consultations when a member is threatened. Article 5 promises mutual assistance, possibly but not necessarily including the use of the members armed forces for collective self-defence. This conditional language pays deference to the constitutional prerogatives of the US Congress in particular. Article 6 defines the areas covered by the treaty. Article 7 affirms the precedence of members obligations under the United Nations Charter. Article 8 safeguards against conflict with any other treaties of the signatories. Article 9 creates a council to oversee implementation of the treaty. Article 10 describes admission procedures for other nations. Article 11 states the ratification procedure. Article 12 allows for reconsideration of the treaty. Article 13 outlines withdrawal procedures. Article 14 calls for the deposition of the official copies of the treaty in the United States Archives.

IV STRUCTURE

The highest authority within NATO is the North Atlantic Council, which is composed of ministers who are represented in permanent session by ambassadors, and is chaired by a Secretary-General. It is responsible for general policy, budgetary outlines, and administrative actions. Subordinate to the council are the Secretariat, various temporary committees, and the Military Committee. The Secretary-General runs the Secretariat, which handles all the non-military functions of the alliance. The temporary committees deal with specific assignments of the council. The Military Committee consists of the chiefs of staff of the various armed forces; it meets twice a year. Between such meetings, the Military Committee, in permanent session with representatives of the members, defines military policies. Below the Military Committee are the various geographical commands. These have been streamlined since the Cold War, the main ones being the Supreme Commander Europe (SACEUR), the Supreme Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), and two regional commanders, for Northern and Southern Europe. The supreme commanders have always been American to symbolize the United States commitment. In the late 1990s the Deputy SACEUR, who is always European, assumed a new role as the potential commander of operations in which the United States might not take part.

V HISTORY

Until 1950 NATO consisted primarily of a pledge by the United States to aid members under the terms of Article 5 of the treaty, and there was no standing military organization for implementation of this pledge. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced the allies that the USSR might act against a divided Germany. The result was not only the creation of a military command system, but also the expansion of the organization. In 1952 Greece and Turkey joined the alliance, and in 1955 West Germany was accepted under a complicated arrangement whereby it would not be allowed to manufacture nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. In its first decade NATO was mainly a military organization dominated by US power, which provided a security blanket for the revival of Europes economy and polity.

Soviet achievement of parity in nuclear weaponry with the United States resulted in concern among Europeans that the United States would not honour its pledge of joint defence if the price were to be the devastation of American territory. The 1960s were characterized by two consequent developments in NATO: the withdrawal in 1966 of France, under President Charles de Gaulle, from the organization but not from the alliance, and attempts to provide mutual confidence between the remaining members of the integrated military organization. A major element in this was the institution of a Nuclear Planning Group in which the Americans and other allies sought a common understanding of a strategy that was now more explicitly based on nuclear deterrence.

The 1970s and 1980s involved NATO in a complicated balancing act between confrontation and détente with an increasingly erratic USSR. The European partners became anxious when Soviet-American relations deteriorated, for fear of a possible war, and became anxious again when Soviet-American relations improved, for fear that the Americans would sacrifice European interests to maintain close ties with the USSR. In the 1980s relations became particularly tense when the USSR tried to undermine European confidence by deploying a large number of an intermediate-range nuclear missile, the SS20, which could devastate Europe but posed no direct threat to the United States. This drew attention to the possibility of a nuclear war in which Europe was destroyed but the Soviet Union and the United States remained intact; this was the contingency President de Gaulle had earlier warned against.

The US response was to deploy a number of intermediate missiles of its own: the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) and the ballistic Pershing II. This apparent outbreak of a new arms race proved intensely controversial in Europe but the crisis was averted when the USSR, probably impelled by increasing realization that it could not afford the strain of a continuing contest in military procurement with the United States, agreed to a so-called double zero disarmament treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement of 1987, whereby all weapons of this kind were to be removed and destroyed by both sides, (see Arms Control and Disarmament). The INF treaty presaged the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact and the decade ended with the apparent success of NATO in surmounting the challenge of the Communist bloc.

The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR brought new challenges for NATO. Russia had not unreasonably expected NATO to follow the Warsaw Pact into dissolution once the East-West confrontation was over and Germany united. Instead the Western powers kept the alliance in being, though giving informal pledges that they saw no need to introduce nuclear weapons or permanently stationed forces of other allies on former East German soil.

The former East European members of the Warsaw Pact, particularly Poland, were now anxious to join NATO as a safeguard against any future Russian aggression. Russia itself, meanwhile, opposed any extension of NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, viewing the maintenance of NATO, let alone its steady extension towards their territory, as an unfriendly act. Russia feels particularly sensitive about the case of the Baltic States, which were recently, as a result of Soviet conquest, part of the USSR itself and not merely nominally sovereign members of the Warsaw Pact.

Russia is equally concerned about the gradual transformation of NATO from a defensive alliance into an organization willing to intervene militarily under the banner of peacekeeping into areas beyond the borders of its members and, as a result, in areas often close to traditional spheres of Russian interest, notably in former Yugoslavia but also, if without military action, in the Caucasus.

In the Yugoslav case NATO has done much to try to involve Russia as a partner, but although some Russian forces have participated, Russia has been kept away from policy decisions and remains suspicious.

The admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland as full members of NATO in 1999 marked a considerable diplomatic defeat for Russia, especially when NATO announced an open-door policy towards a queue of other nations lining up to join. NATOs criteria for entry entail commitments to democracy and peaceful behaviour, and a modicum of military capability, on the principle that new members should strengthen and not weaken the alliance, but there is no explicit geopolitical limit to membership.

NATO has tried to further its interest in a stable Europe while also placating Russia by establishing halfway houses to membership in which Russia itself is invited to participate. Thus the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, formed in 1991 and subsequently converted in 1994 into the European-Atlantic Partnership Council, allows Russia and others as far afield as Kazakhstan (because it is a former part of the USSR) to consult on security issues. The same is true of the parallel Partnership for Peace that provides for permanent liaison missions for members at NATO headquarters and for participation on an ad hoc basis in peacekeeping operations. To further placate Russia and recognize its special importance, NATO accompanied progress towards a new Strategic Concept, agreed in April 1999, and laying much more emphasis on peacekeeping operations out of treaty area, with the signing of a Founding Act with Russia in 1997. This establishes a bilateral relationship between Russia and NATO as a whole. The Permanent Joint Council has a standing organization and there is a permanent Russian presence at NATO headquarters. NATO has, however, been careful, while promising consultation in crises, to reject any notion of needing Russian agreement to act. Such incidents as the Kosovo crisis (1998-1999), in which NATO virtually went to war with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a state friendly to Russia, severely strained relations despite all the cooperative machinery.

To avoid seeming to squeeze Ukraine between NATO and a Russia accorded a privileged status, NATO has also agreed a NATO-Ukraine Charter that grants Ukraine some special status of its own, though on a less intensive basis that that afforded Russia.

VI ACHIEVEMENTS

Over the years the existence of NATO and above all the years of integrated military structures and planning have led to a historically unprecedented degree of political and military confidence and integration between sovereign sates. One result has been to create an unrivalled facility for joint operations as was exemplified in the Gulf War against Iraq, and in the several Yugoslav episodes.

NATO gave a once demoralized Western Europe confidence within which it has achieved its current degree of politico-economic unity and welfare. NATO also almost certainly deterred further Soviet expansion, although it is impossible to know whether a full-scale conquest of Europe would otherwise have materialized. Certainly the peaceful unification of Germany was a remarkable achievement that is hard to imagine taking place in the absence of a sound structure of Western European solidarity.

Now, paradoxically, one of the greatest challenges facing NATO is the consequence of precisely its contribution to creating a Europe whole and free. The Western Europeans, increasingly integrated politically, are naturally turning towards a greater integration of their defence. The United States has always been ambivalent about this prospect, welcoming cooperation and the absence of strife in Europe, but nervous that a Europe united in defence might pursue unwelcome policies. Many US leaders have felt that the United States has a right to suspect too much European independence, because the history of the 20th century was one in which the United States often found itself involved in clearing up crises into which Europeans had fallen.

Much NATO diplomacy at the turn of the century has thus been about how to embrace the beginnings of European defence identity within the alliance mould. The Strategic Concept, adopted in 1999, recognizes that NATO is the only framework for collective self-defence, but that the Europeans may want to carry out peacekeeping operations in which the United States did not want to be involved. The concept adopted for such cases is that of Common Joint Task Forces (CJTF), whereby Europeans might, with US consent, draw on NATO resources (which frequently would mean such US assets as heavy airlift or satellite intelligence) to conduct operations under the European Deputy SACEUR. It will take time to discover whether this formula will work and whether the various parties will be tolerant of each others needs and preferences. But as a further stage in working out a mutually beneficial balance between United States and European security interests which are close but not identical, the challenge is one that those who founded the alliance over half a century ago would easily recognize.



Cheers,

Rastus

Trump is making Russia first and making Russia great again.

The reason the U.S. contributes the most to NATO is because we are the largest economy.

Another thing you may find interesting, is the only time article 5 has ever been evoked - was by us. This was after 911, and our NATO allies joined us in our fight in Afghanistan. One could argue that it is all the others that aren't getting what they are paying for.

Since when have you been so passionate about this? Oh that's right, since your overlord made an issue of it. How silly of me.