Everything about Nato totally explained
The
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (
NATO); ; (also called the
North Atlantic Alliance, the
Atlantic Alliance, or the
Western Alliance) is a
military alliance established by the signing of the
North Atlantic Treaty on
4 April 1949. Headquartered in
Brussels,
Belgium, the organization constitutes a system of
collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
For its first few years, NATO wasn't much more than a political association. However the Korean War galvanised the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. Throughout the Cold War doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion - doubts that led to the development of the
independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure from 1966. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organisation became drawn into the Balkans while building better links with former potential enemies to the east, which culminated with three former
Warsaw Pact states joining the alliance in 1999. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks NATO has attempted to refocus itself to new challenges and has deployed troops to Afghanistan and
trainers to Iraq.
History of NATO
Beginnings
The
Treaty of Brussels, signed on
17 March,
1948 by
Belgium, the
Netherlands,
Luxembourg,
France and the
United Kingdom is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The treaty and the Soviet
Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the
Western European Union's Defence Organisation in September 1948. However, participation of the
United States was thought necessary in order to counter the military power of the
Soviet Union, and therefore talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately.
These talks resulted in the
North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in
Washington, D.C. on
4 April 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states, as well as the
United States,
Canada,
Portugal,
Italy,
Norway,
Denmark and
Iceland. Support for the Treaty wasn't unanimous; Iceland suffered an
anti-NATO riot in March 1949 which may have been Communist-inspired. Three years later, on
18 February 1952,
Greece and
Turkey also joined.
Such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force doesn't necessarily mean that other member states will respond with military action against the aggressor(s). Rather they're obliged to respond, but maintain the freedom to choose how that'll respond. This differs from Article IV of the Treaty of Brussels (which founded the Western European Union) which clearly states that the response must include military action. It is however often assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily. Further, the article limits the organization's scope to Europe and North America, which explains why the
invasion of the British Falkland Islands didn't result in NATO involvement.
The outbreak of the
Korean War in 1950 was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent threat level greatly (all Communist countries were suspected of working together) and forced the alliance to develop concrete military plans. The 1952 Lisbon conference, seeking to provide the forces necessary for NATO's Long-Term Defence Plan, called for an expansion to 96
divisions. However this requirement was dropped the following year to roughly 35 divisions with heavier use to be made of nuclear weapons. Also at Lisbon, the post of
Secretary General of NATO as the organisation's chief civilian was also created, and Baron
Hastings Ismay eventually appointed to the post. Later, in September 1952, the first major NATO maritime exercises began;
Operation Mainbrace brought together 200 ships and over 50,000 personnel to practice the defence of Denmark and Norway. Meanwhile, while this overt military preparation was going on, covert stay-behind arrangements to continue resistance after a successful Soviet invasion ('
Operation Gladio'), initially made by the
Western European Union, were being transferred to NATO control. Ultimately unofficial bonds began to grow between NATO's armed forces, such as the
NATO Tiger Association and competitions such as the
Canadian Army Trophy for tank gunnery.
In 1954, the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe. The NATO countries, fearing that the Soviet Union's motive was to weaken the alliance, ultimately rejected this proposal.
The incorporation of
West Germany into the organization on
9 May 1955 was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by
Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of Norway at the time. Indeed, one of its immediate results was the creation of the
Warsaw Pact, signed on
14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and East Germany, as a formal response to this event, thereby delineating the two opposing sides of the
Cold War.
The unity of NATO was breached early on in its history, with a crisis occurring during
Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onward. De Gaulle protested the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a
special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan on
17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably
Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance.
Considering the response given to be unsatisfactory, and in order to give France, in the event of a East German incursion into West Germany, the option of coming to a separate peace with the Eastern bloc instead of being drawn into a NATO-Warsaw Pact global war, de Gaulle began to build an independent defence for his country. On
11 March 1959, France withdrew its
Mediterranean fleet from NATO command; three months later, in June 1959, de Gaulle banned the stationing of foreign
nuclear weapons on French soil. This caused the United States to transfer two hundred military aircraft out of France and return control of the
ten major air force bases that had operated in France since 1950 to the French by 1967.
In the meantime, France had initiated an
independent nuclear deterrence programme, spearheaded by the
"Force de frappe" ("Striking force"). France tested its first nuclear weapon,
Gerboise Bleue, on
13 February 1960, in (what was then)
French Algeria.
Though France showed solidarity with the rest of NATO during the
Cuban missile crisis in 1962, de Gaulle continued his pursuit of an independent defence by removing France's
Atlantic and
Channel fleets from NATO command. In 1966, all French armed forces were removed from NATO's integrated military command, and all non-French NATO troops were asked to leave France. This withdrawal forced the relocation of the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) from
Paris to
Casteau, north of
Mons, Belgium, by
16 October 1967. France remained a member of the alliance, and committed to the defence of Europe from possible Communist attack with its own forces stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany throughout this period. France rejoined NATO's Military Committee in 1995, and has since intensified working relations with the military structure. France has not, however, rejoined the integrated military command and no non-French NATO troops are allowed to be based on its soil. The policies of current French President
Nicolas Sarkozy appear to be aimed at eventual re-integration.
The creation of NATO brought about some
standardisation of allied
military terminology, procedures, and technology, which in many cases meant European countries adopting U.S. practices. The roughly 1300 Standardization Agreements (
STANAGs) codifies the standardisation that NATO has achieved. Hence, the
7.62×51 NATO rifle cartridge was introduced in the 1950s as a standard firearm cartridge among many NATO countries.
Fabrique Nationale's
FAL became the most popular 7.62 NATO rifle in Europe and served into the early 1990s. Also,
aircraft marshalling signals were standardized, so that any NATO aircraft could land at any NATO base. Other standards such as the
NATO phonetic alphabet have made their way beyond NATO into civilian use.
Détente
During most of the duration of the Cold War, NATO maintained a holding pattern with no actual military engagement as an organization. On
1 July 1968, the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature: NATO argued that its
nuclear weapons sharing arrangements didn't breach the treaty as U.S. forces controlled the weapons until a decision was made to go to war, at which point the treaty would no longer be controlling. Few states knew of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangements at that time, and they were not challenged.
On
30 May 1978, NATO countries officially defined two complementary aims of the Alliance, to maintain security and pursue détente. This was supposed to mean matching defences at the level rendered necessary by the Warsaw Pact's offensive capabilities without spurring a further
arms race.
On
12 December 1979, in light of a build-up of Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities in Europe, ministers approved the deployment of U.S.
GLCM cruise missiles and
Pershing II theatre nuclear weapons in Europe. The new warheads were also meant to strengthen the western negotiating position in regard to nuclear disarmament. This policy was called the
Dual Track policy. Similarly, in 1983–84, responding to the stationing of Warsaw Pact
SS-20 medium-range missiles in Europe, NATO deployed modern Pershing II missiles tasked to hit military targets such as tank formations in the event of war. This action led to
peace movement protests throughout Western Europe.
KAL 007 and NATO deployment of missiles in W. Europe
With the background of the build-up of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Reagan presidency, to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe, primarily West Germany. These missiles were theatre nuclear weapons intended to strike targets on the battlefield if the Soviets invaded West Germany. Yet support for the deployment was wavering and many doubted whether the push for deployment could be sustained. But on Sept. 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down
Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, in international waters just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island - an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". The barbarity of this act, as the U.S. and indeed the world understood it, galvanized support for the deployment - which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhael Gorbachev.
The membership of the organization in this time period likewise remained largely static. In 1974, as a consequence of the
Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Greece withdrew its forces from NATO's military command structure, but, with Turkish cooperation, were readmitted in 1980. On
30 May 1982, NATO gained a new member when, following a
referendum, the newly democratic
Spain joined the alliance.
In November 1983, NATO manoeuvres simulating a nuclear launch caused panic in the Kremlin. The Soviet leadership, led by ailing General Secretary
Yuri Andropov, became concerned that the manoeuvres, codenamed
Able Archer 83, were the beginnings of a genuine
first strike. In response, Soviet nuclear forces were readied and air units in
East Germany and
Poland were placed on alert. Though at the time written off by U.S. intelligence as a propaganda effort, many historians now believe that the Soviet fear of a NATO first strike was genuine.
Post Cold War
The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact in 1991 removed the
de facto main adversary of NATO. This caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature and tasks. In practice this ended up entailing a gradual (and still ongoing) expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, as well as the extension of its activities to areas that hadn't formerly been NATO concerns.
The first post-Cold War expansion of NATO came with the
reunification of Germany on
3 October 1990, when the former
East Germany became part of the
Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance. This had been agreed in the
Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet approval of a united Germany remaining in NATO, it was agreed that foreign troops and nuclear weapons wouldn't be stationed in the east.
The scholar
Stephen F. Cohen argued in 2005 that a commitment was given that NATO would never expand further east, but according to
Robert B. Zoellick, then a
State Department official involved in the Two Plus Four negotiating process, this appears to be a misperception; no formal commitment of the sort was made. On May 7, 2008,
The Daily Telegraph held an interview with Gorbachev in which he repeated his view that such a commitment had been made. Gorbachev said "the Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they can't be trusted."
As part of post-Cold War restructuring, NATO's military structure was cut back and reorganized, with new forces such as the
Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps established. The
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe agreed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and signed in Paris in 1990, mandated specific reductions. The changes brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union on the military balance in Europe were recognized in the
Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, signed some years later.
The first NATO military operation caused by the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was
Operation Sharp Guard, which ran from June 1993–October 1996. It provided maritime enforcement of the
arms embargo and
economic sanctions against the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On
28 February 1994, NATO took its first military action, shooting down four Bosnian Serb aircraft violating a U.N.-mandated
no-fly zone over central
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Operation Deny Flight, the no-fly-zone enforcement mission, had begun a year before, on
12 April 1993, and was to continue until
20 December 1995. NATO air strikes that year helped bring the
war in Bosnia to an end, resulting in the
Dayton Agreement, which in turn meant that NATO deployed a peacekeeping force, under
Operation Joint Endeavor, first named
IFOR and then
SFOR, which ran from December 1996 to December 2004. Following the lead of its member nations, NATO began to award a service medal, the
NATO Medal, for these operations.
Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbours were set up, like the
Partnership for Peace, the
Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and the
Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. On
8 July 1997, three former communist countries,
Hungary, the
Czech Republic, and
Poland, were invited to join NATO, which finally happened in 1999.
A NATO bombing campaign,
Operation Deliberate Force, began in August, 1995, against the
Army of Republika Srpska, after the
Srebrenica massacre. On
24 March 1999, NATO saw its first broad-scale military engagement in the
Kosovo War, where it waged an 11-week bombing campaign, which NATO called
Operation Allied Force, against what was then the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in an effort to stop Serbian-led ethnic cleansing. A formal declaration of war never took place (in common with all wars since World War II). The conflict ended on
11 June 1999, when Yugoslavian leader
Slobodan Milošević agreed to NATO’s demands by accepting
UN resolution 1244. During the crisis, NATO also deployed one of its international reaction forces, the ACE Mobile Force (Land), to
Albania as the Albania Force (AFOR), to deliver humanitarian aid to refugees from
Kosovo. NATO then helped establish the
KFOR, a NATO-led force under a
United Nations mandate that operated the military mission in Kosovo. In August–September 2001, the alliance also mounted
Operation Essential Harvest, a mission disarming ethnic Albanian militias in the
Republic of Macedonia.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and most other NATO countries opposed efforts to require the U.N. Security Council to approve NATO military strikes, such as the ongoing action against Yugoslavia, while France and some others claimed that the alliance needed U.N. approval. The U.S./U.K. side claimed that this would undermine the authority of the alliance, and they noted that
Russia and
China would have exercised their Security Council vetoes to block the strike on
Yugoslavia, and could do the same in future conflicts where NATO intervention was required, thus nullifying the entire potency and purpose of the organization.
After the September 11 attacks
The
September 11 attacks caused NATO to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter for the first time in its history. The Article says that an attack on any member shall be considered to be an attack on all. The invocation was confirmed on
4 October 2001 when NATO determined that the attacks were indeed eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. The eight official actions taken by NATO in response to the attacks included :
Operation Eagle Assist and
Operation Active Endeavour.
Operation Active Endeavour is a naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea and is designed to prevent the movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction as well as to enhance the security of shipping in general. It began on October 4, 2001.
Despite this early show of solidarity, NATO faced a crisis little more than a year later, when on
10 February 2003, France and Belgium vetoed the procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with
Iraq. Germany didn't use its right to break the procedure but said it supported the veto.
On the issue of
Afghanistan on the other hand, the alliance showed greater unity: On
16 April 2003 NATO agreed to take command of the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The decision came at the request of Germany and the Netherlands, the two nations leading ISAF at the time of the agreement, and all 19 NATO ambassadors approved it unanimously. The handover of control to NATO took place on
11 August, and marked the first time in NATO’s history that it took charge of a mission outside the north Atlantic area.
Canada had originally been slated to take over ISAF by itself on that date.
In January 2004, NATO appointed Minister
Hikmet Çetin, of Turkey, as the Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) in Afghanistan. Minister Cetin is primarily responsible for advancing the political-military aspects of the Alliance in Afghanistan. In August 2004, following U.S. pressure, NATO formed the
NATO Training Mission - Iraq, a training mission to assist the Iraqi security forces in conjunction with the U.S. led
MNF-I.
On
31 July 2006, a NATO-led force, made up mostly of troops from Canada, Great Britain, Turkey and the Netherlands, took over
military operations in the south of Afghanistan from a U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition.
Expansion and restructuring
New NATO structures were also formed while old ones were abolished: The
NATO Response Force (NRF) was launched at the
2002 Prague Summit on
21 November. On
19 June 2003, a major restructuring of the NATO military commands began as the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic were abolished and a new command,
Allied Command Transformation (ACT), was established in
Norfolk, Virginia,
USA, and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) became the Headquarters of
Allied Command Operations (ACO). ACT is responsible for driving transformation (future capabilities) in NATO, whilst ACO is responsible for current operations.
Membership went on expanding with the accession of seven more Northern European and Eastern European countries to NATO:
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania and also
Slovenia,
Slovakia,
Bulgaria, and
Romania. They were first invited to start talks of membership during the 2002 Prague Summit, and joined NATO on
29 March 2004, shortly before the
2004 Istanbul Summit.
The same month, NATO's
Baltic Air Policing began, which supported the sovereignty of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia by providing fighters to react to any unwanted aerial intrusions. Four fighters are based in Lithuania, provided in rotation by virtually all the NATO states.
Operation Peaceful Summit temporarily enhanced this patrolling during the
2006 Riga Summit.
The
2006 NATO summit was held in
Riga,
Latvia, which had joined the Atlantic Alliance two years earlier. It is the first
NATO summit to be held in a country that was part of the
Soviet Union, and the second one in a former
COMECON country (after the
2002 Prague Summit). Energy Security was one of the main themes of the Riga Summit.
At the April 2008 summit in
Bucharest,
Romania, NATO agreed to the accession of
Croatia and
Albania and invited them to join.
Ukraine and
Georgia were also told that that'll eventually become members (see
NATO#Future Enlargement of NATO below).
Involvement in Afghanistan: Taking over ISAF
In August 2003, NATO commenced its first mission ever outside Europe when it assumed control over
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan. However, some critics feel that
national caveats or other restrictions undermine the efficiency of ISAF. For instance, political scientist
Joseph Nye stated in a 2006 article that "many NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan have 'national caveats' that restrict how their troops may be used. While the Riga summit relaxed some of these caveats to allow assistance to allies in dire circumstances, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and the U.S. are doing most of the fighting in southern Afghanistan, while French, German, and Italian troops are deployed in the quieter north. Due to the intensity of the fighting in the south, France has recently allowed a squadron of
Mirage 2000 fighter/attack aircraft to be moved into the area, to
Khandahar, in order to reinforce the alliance's efforts. It is difficult to see how NATO can succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan unless it's willing to commit more troops and give commanders more flexibility." If these caveats were to be eliminated, it's argued that this could help NATO to succeed.
NATO missile defence talks controversy
For some years, the United States negotiated with
Poland and the
Czech Republic for the deployment of interceptor missiles and a radar tracking system in the two countries. Both countries' governments indicated that they'd allow the deployment. The proposed American missile defence site in Central Europe is believed to be fully operational in 2015 and would be capable of covering most of Europe except part of Romania plus Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
In April 2007, NATO's European allies called for a NATO missile defence system which would complement the American
National Missile Defense system to protect Europe from missile attacks and NATO's decision-making North Atlantic Council held consultations on missile defence in the first meeting on the topic at such a senior level.
Secretary General
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the system wouldn't affect strategic balance or threaten Russia, as the plan is to base only 10 interceptor missiles in
Poland with an associated radar in the Czech Republic.
On July 14, 2007, Russia notified its intention to suspend the CFE treaty, effective 150 days later.
Separately, NATO has decided to establish the
Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (
CCD COE) at
Tallinn,
Estonia, to assist its member states, in addition to the already-existing internal computer network defence team.
Membership
There are currently 26 members within NATO.
At the NATO summit in
Bucharest (April 2008)
Albania and
Croatia were officially invited to start accession talks with the alliance.
Future enlargement of NATO
Republic of Macedonia/
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, was under consideration to enter NATO in 2009 but wasn't agreed upon. FYROM is likely to enter the alliance at some point, with
Jane's Defence Weekly commenting on 16 April 2008 that resolution to the naming issue that's holding up entry is 'likely by the end of this year [2008] and no later than the 2009 summit.' At the same 2008 summit in Bucharest, the communique explicitly said that
Georgia and
Ukraine 'will become members of NATO.'
Other potential candidate countries include, in South-eastern Europe,
Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia. Other possible, long neutral countries that might become members are
Finland and
Sweden. Russia, as referred to above, continues to oppose further expansion, seeing it as inconsistent with understandings between Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President
George H. W. Bush which allowed for a peaceful
unification of Germany. NATO's expansion policy is seen as a continuation of a Cold War attempt to surround and isolate Russia.
Cooperation with non-member states
Euro-Atlantic Partnership
A double framework has been established to help further co-operation between the 26 NATO members and 23 "partner countries".
- The Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme was established in 1994 and is based on individual bilateral relations between each partner country and NATO: each country may choose the extent of its participation. The PfP programme is considered the operational wing of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership.
- The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) on the other hand was first established on 29 May 1997, and is a forum for regular coordination, consultation and dialogue between all 49 participants.
The 23 partner countries are the following:
Former Soviet republics: » #
# » #
# » #
# » #
# » #
# » #
#
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Countries that (though militarily neutral) possessed capitalist economies during the Cold War: » #
# » #
# » #
Nations that (though militarily neutral) possessed socialist economies during the Cold War: » #
# (as part of Yugoslavia) » # (as part of Yugoslavia)
# (as part of Yugoslavia) » # (as part of Yugoslavia)
# (as part of Yugoslavia)
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joined PfP on April 26, 1995, but its new government withdrew on October 27, 1996. Malta's Membership in PfP was reactivated on April 3, 2008.
's admission to PfP is resisted by Turkey, because of the Northern Cyprus issue. Because of this Cyprus isn't participating in ESDP activities that use NATO assets and information.
Individual Partnership Action Plans
Launched at the November 2002 Prague Summit, Individual Partnership Action Plans (IPAPs) are open to countries that have the political will and ability to deepen their relationship with NATO.
Currently IPAPs are in implementation with the following countries:
(29 october 2004)
(27 May 2005)
(16 December 2005)
(31 January 2006)
(19 May 2006)
(10 January 2008)
Structures
The NATO website divides the internal NATO organisation into political structures, military structures, and agencies & organisations immediately subordinate to NATO headquarters.
Political structure
Like any alliance, NATO is ultimately governed by its 26 member states. However, the North Atlantic Treaty
, and other agreements, outline how decisions are to be made within NATO. Each of the 26 members sends a delegation or mission to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The senior permanent member of each delegation is known as the Permanent Representative and is generally a senior civil servant or an experienced ambassador (and holding that diplomatic rank).
Together the Permanent Members form the North Atlantic Council (NAC), a body which meets together at least once a week and has effective political authority and powers of decision in NATO.
From time to time the Council also meets at higher levels involving Foreign Ministers, Defence Ministers or Heads of State or Government (HOSG) and it's at these meetings that major decisions regarding NATO’s policies are generally taken. However, it's worth noting that the Council has the same authority and powers of decision-making, and its decisions have the same status and validity, at whatever level it meets. NATO summits also form a further venue for decisions on complex issues, such as enlargement.
The meetings of the North Atlantic Council are chaired by the Secretary General of NATO and, when decisions have to be made, action is agreed upon on the basis of unanimity and common accord. There is no voting or decision by majority. Each nation represented at the Council table or on any of its subordinate committees retains complete sovereignty and responsibility for its own decisions.
The second pivotal member of each country's delegation is the Military Representative, a senior officer from each country's armed forces. Together the Military Representatives form the Military Committee (MC), a body responsible for recommending to NATO’s political authorities those measures considered necessary for the common defence of the NATO area. Its principal role is to provide direction and advice on military policy and strategy. It provides guidance on military matters to the NATO Strategic Commanders, whose representatives attend its meetings, and is responsible for the overall conduct of the military affairs of the Alliance under the authority of the Council.
Like the council, from time to time the Military Committee also meets at a higher level, namely at the level of Chiefs of defence, the most senior military officer in each nation's armed forces. The Defence Planning Committee excludes France, due to that country's 1966 decision to remove itself from NATO's integrated military structure. On a practical level, this means that issues that are acceptable to most NATO members but unacceptable to France may be directed to the Defence Planning Committee for more expedient resolution. Such was the case in the lead up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The current Chairman of the NATO Military Committee is Ray Henault of Canada (since 2005).
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly, presided by José Lello, is made up of legislators from the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance as well as 13 associate members. It is however officially a different structure from NATO, and has as aim to join together deputies of NATO countries in order to discuss security policies.
Subordinate to the political structure are the International Staff and International Military Staff, which administer NATO programmes and carry out high-level political, military, and also civil emergency planning.
Over the years, non-governmental citizens' groups have grown up in support of NATO, broadly under the banner of the Atlantic Council/Atlantic Treaty Association movement.
List of officials
Military structure
NATO's military operations are directed by the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and split into two Strategic Commands both commanded by a senior US officer assisted by a staff drawn from across NATO. The Strategic Commanders are responsible to the Military Committee for the overall direction and conduct of all Alliance military matters within their areas of command.
Before 2003 the Strategic Commanders were the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) but the current arrangement is to separate command responsibility between Allied Command Transformation (ACT), responsible for transformation and training of NATO forces, and Allied Command Operations, responsible for NATO operations world wide.
The commander of Allied Command Operations retained the title "Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR)", and is based in the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) located at Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons. This is about 80 km (50 miles) south of NATO’s political headquarters in Brussels. ACO is headed by SACEUR, a US four star general with the dual-hatted role of heading US European Command, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. SHAPE was in Paris until 1966, when French president Charles de Gaulle withdrew French forces from the Atlantic Alliance. NATO's headquarters were then forced to move to Belgium, while many military units had to move.
ACO includes Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands, Joint Force Command Naples in Italy, and Joint Command Lisbon, all multinational headquarters with many nations represented. JFC Brunssum has its land component, Allied Land Component Command Headquarters Heidelberg at Heidelberg, Germany, its air component at Ramstein in Germany, and its naval component at the Northwood Headquarters in the northwest suburbs of London. JFC Naples has its land component in Madrid, air component at Izmir, Turkey, and naval component in Naples, Italy. It also directs KFOR in Kosovo. JC Lisbon is a smaller HQ with no subordinate commands. Lajes Field, in the Portuguese Azores, is an important transatlantic staging post. Directly responsible to SACEUR is the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force at NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen in Germany where a jointly funded fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS airborne radar aircraft is located. The C-17s of the NATO Strategic Airlift Capability, to be made operational in the next few years, will be based at Pápa airfield in Hungary, and probably come under SACEUR's control.
Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is based in the former Allied Command Atlantic headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. Allied Command Atlantic, usually known as SACLANT (Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic), after its commander, became ACT in 2003. It is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), a US four-star general or admiral with the dual-hatted role as commander US Joint Forces Command (COMUSJFCOM). There is also an ACT command element located at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium.
Subordinate ACT organisations include the Joint Warfare Centre (JWC) located in Stavanger, Norway (in the same site as the Norwegian NJHQ); the Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) in Bydgoszcz, Poland; the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre (JALLC) in Monsanto, Portugal; and the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC), La Spezia, Italy.
Organisations and Agencies
The NATO website lists forty-three different agencies and organisation and five project committees/offices as of 15 May 2008. They include:
nine logistics bodies (including five pipeline and one medical), which include the:
five production logistics bodies, including the:
four standardisation bodies, including the NATO Standardization Agency
three civil emergency planning bodies
five Air Defence & Air Traffic Control bodies, including the:
one AEW body, the NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Programme Management Organisation
eight communications & information systems bodies, including the:
one electronic warfare agency
one meteorological body, the Military Committee Meteorological Group (MCMG)
one oceanography body, the Military Oceanography (MILOC) Group
the Research and Technology Agency (RTA), reporting to the NATO Research and Technology Organisation (RTO);
four education & training bodies, including the NATO School and NATO Defence College
five project committees and offices:
- Alliance Ground Surveillance Capability Provisional Project Office (AGS/PPO)
- Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System (BICES)
- NATO Continuous Acquisition and Life Cycle Support Office (CALS)
- NATO FORACS Office
- Munitions Safety Information Analysis Center (MSIAC)
Further Information
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