Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In 2021, the United States had the largest number of military personnel out of all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, with 1.35 million troops.
Together with the Chair of the NATO Military Committee and the supreme allied commander, the officeholder is one of the foremost officials of NATO. The current secretary general is former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who took office on 1 October 2014.
Incumbent
The current Chair of the NATO Military Committee is lieutenant admiral Rob Bauer, former Chief of Defence of the Netherlands, who took office on 25 June 2021.
In April this year, the four countries participated in NATO's foreign ministerial meeting and they agreed to continue supporting Ukraine and to step up cooperation given the "global implications" of Russia's war on Ukraine. Australia, Japan and South Korea are all U.S. security allies.
It is debateable if the UN or organisations such as NATO are more powerful in the world. The UN likely commands more global influence, but NATO, for example, is more powerful militarily. Inter-governmental organisations, such as the European Union, are hugely powerful globally.
Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned, was elected President.
No, Russia is not part of NATO.
In 2022, China had the largest armed forces in the world by active duty military personnel, with about 2 million active soldiers. India, the United States, North Korea, and Russia rounded out the top five largest armies respectively, each with over one million active military personnel.
United States. The United States of America is a North American nation that is the world's most dominant economic and military power.
Six EU member states, all who have declared their non-alignment with military alliances, are not NATO members: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden. Additionally, Switzerland, which is surrounded by the EU, has also maintained their neutrality by remaining a non-EU-member.
The combined total of Nato military personnel currently exceeds 5.4m – around four times as many as Russia, according to Statista.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a coalition of countries – including many NATO Allies – militarily intervened in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.
India is not a member of NATO and there are many reasons for not being a member country of NATO. The first and main reason is India is not in the North Atlantic or anywhere close to the Atlantic.
Since 1949, NATO has increased its collective military power. Today it has the capability to count on nearly 3.5-million personnel, troops and civilian combined. Each member state agrees to contribute with different strategic weight and influence.
In March 2015, Russia, citing NATO's de facto breach of the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, said that the suspension of its participation in it, announced in 2007, was now "complete" through halting its participation in the consulting group on the Treaty.
In response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Allies activated NATO's defence plans and deployed thousands of extra troops from both sides of the Atlantic.
The NATO Alliance consists of 30 member states from North America and Europe. Article Five of the treaty states that if an armed attack occurs against one of the member states, it should be considered an attack against all members, and other members shall assist the attacked member, with armed forces if necessary.
The formal process is stated in article XIII of the Treaty. This says that any country that wants to leave must send the United States (as the depositary) a "notice of denunciation", which the U.S. would then pass on to the other countries in the alliance.
Ukraine signed the Charter of the United Nations as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on 26 June, 1945, and it came into force on 24 October, 1945. Ukraine was among the first countries that signed the United Nations Charter, becoming a founding member of the United Nations among 51 countries.
As the name “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” suggests, NATO is essentially a treaty organization for nations in the North Atlantic region. Located on the rim of the Pacific, Japan is not eligible to join NATO because of its geographical location.