NATO Definition
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a defensive military alliance between select countries in North America and Europe originally aligned in the shared goal of containing the spread of communism by the Soviet Union and its satellite/allied states. Founded in 1949, loosely on the core tenets of protecting democracy and capitalism, NATO has expanded to Central and Eastern Europe, surviving even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. From its founding as a bloc of 12 member states, today NATO is comprised of 30 member states alongside dozens of other allied countries under the auspices of shared military contributions to a collective defense.
Glen Duerr and Calvin Plank
Introduction
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a primarily defensive military alliance originally formed in 1949 by 12-member states in Western Europe and North America, building upon the Treaty of Dunkirk in 1947 and the Treaty of Brussels in 1948, all designed to...
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Further Reading
Duignan, P. (2000). NATO: Its past, present, future. Stanford: Hoover Press.
Lindley-French, J. (2015). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization: The enduring alliance (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Moore, R. R. (2007). NATO’s new mission: Projecting stability in a post-cold war world. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
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Duerr, G., Plank, C. (2023). North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In: Romaniuk, S.N., Marton, P.N. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74319-6_86
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74319-6_86
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