Insights

The unprecedented security alliance known as NATO is unparalleled in modern history. Signed in Washington, DC on April 4^th, 1949, it represented a mutually defensive blanket against the suffocating communist bloc countries in Eastern Europe led by the old Soviet Union. The original signatories of the treaty were the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, West Germany in 1995, Spain in 1982, and Hungry, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the alliance. Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020 brought the membership to thirty. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for membership and were accepted in 2023 and 2024, bringing the total of member countries to thirty-two.

I recounted all the member nations and their acceptance by the organization to highlight the length and breadth of the NATO umbrella. NATO is a political and military alliance comprised of three entities. The first is the ministerial headquarters in Brussels where each member nation sends an ambassador. The second is comprised of delegates from each countries’ Parliament or Congress. This was the place where I served as President from 2008 through 2010. The third is the military component commanded by an American General or Admiral known as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe or SACUR. The military has an Officer School in Oberammergau, Germany and was established in 1953 to train officers from member countries to coordinate NATO defense efforts. So, given the origin and history of NATO, one can easily see not only its importance, but its reach.

The bedrock principle is Article 5 of the Treaty, which provides that any member nation under attack will be seen as an attack on the entire alliance. This one for all and all for one principle is unprecedented and many believe it is the glue that binds the whole. Article 5 has only been invoked once in the history of the Treaty on behalf of the United States after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. NATO troops have been deployed in the Middle East along with U.S. forces ever since.

I suspect the wisdom of the 2003 invasion of Iraq will be debated by historical scholars for years to come. I personally recall a situation where NATO membership played an important role.

I was in Brussels and received a call to go to Ankara Turkey. The Turkish Parliament was unsure about the U.S. position and was debating the use of lncirlik Air Base in Turkey for the war effort to oust Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Ambassador to Turkey at the time was Robert Pearson who was a friend of mine from my Congressional District in Tennessee. The Turk in their government who had authority over the matter was also a friend of mine, who I met when he was the Turkish Ambassador to the United States. We met in our ambassador’s office at midnight and monitored the Parliament’s deliberations which concluded at 4:00 a.m., in favor. I believe NATO membership played a major role in that outcome.

The current situation regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine again reinforces the strategic importance of NATO.

The alliance has held firmly in Europe with regard to economic sanctions imposed, often times to the economic distress of European member nations. The United States supplying war materials to allow the Ukrainians to fight Russia is a major factor of the unified front NATO presents to Russia. Most of the weaponry, by the way, is bought by Ukraine from U.S. companies. Therefore, one could conclude that fighting a Russian Army for pennies on the dollar and no American bloodshed is again a concrete example of the NATO treaty’s importance to U.S. National Security. It is no secret that Putin has designs for Eastern Europe and The Baltic States beyond Ukraine.

We have seen this move before with Hitler and the Third Reich in the late 1930’s, so we know how it goes. Therefore, one might argue that NATO is now more relevant to the U.S. and a free world order now more than ever before.

In summary, NATO gives our Country the underpinning for international military activities vital to U.S. interests. In that regard, it is invaluable and should have the support of every American.