NATO ON APRIL 4 IN 1949 THE FIRST ALLIES SIGNED THE NORTH ATLTANTIC TREATY

USPA NEWS - It´s NATO's birthday today ! On this day in 1949, 12 Allies signed the North Atlantic Treaty.
Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Canada, and the United States vowed to stand together against aggression.

Any attack against one would be an attack against all. Sixty six years later, these core values remain intact, and the alliance now includes 28 Allies.----------------------------------------------------------------------NATO IS THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION COUNTS 28 COUNTRIES-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is historical now, but it started on April 4th 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty an international symbolic pact, was signed by Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands,... in Washington DC. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military Alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. 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. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO'sPartnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70 percent of the global total. Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2 percent of GDP.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the 11 september 2001 attacks after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF. The organization has operated a range of additional roles since then, including sending trainers to Iraq assisting in counter-piracy operation and in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N Security Council Resolution 1973 U.N. The less potent Article 4, which merely invokes consultation among NATO members, has been invoked four times: by Turkey in 2003 over the Iraq War, twice in 2012 by Turkey over the Syrian Civil War after the downing of an unarmed Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from Syria and in 2014 by Poland following the Russian intervention in Crimea. Source and for more information see: www.nato.int-----------------------------------