Alcohol advertising is prohibited in our country, but this does not mean that it does not exist. From time to time, under peppy music, some pleasant young people appear on TV screens, they do something good and useful, go in for sports, dance, have fun, without drinking a drop of alcohol. At the end of the video, a well-known brand of whiskey, vodka, or beer flashes. It's not a drink that's being advertised, but a brand and a lifestyle. The idea of North Atlantic military unity is being promoted on the same principle.
Unobtrusively, the idea is suggested that the countries that joined NATO automatically join a certain sacrament, and immediately become prosperous and prosperous. The picture is pastoral, there is no place in it for either bombed-out cities, or dusty roads of southern countries, or coffins brought from them by night planes.
In the late forties, the creation of the North Atlantic bloc was a completely justified measure. The Stalinist USSR, despite the post-war devastation, sought to expand its geopolitical influence, exploiting any weakness in Western democracies. The goal, as before, was not hidden, about hersaid in every speech of every Soviet leader. Communism is possible only when capitalism is destroyed.
The countries that joined NATO in 1949 formed the notorious "Iron Curtain", which Winston Churchill spoke about in Fulton. There were 12 of them: the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Norway, Holland, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg and Belgium, in the capital of which the headquarters of the new defense union is located. The fifth article of the treaty clearly and unambiguously formulates the principle of collective defense: if someone (read the USSR) attacks any participating state, the rest undertake to enter into a military conflict on the side of the latter.
Formally, all countries that joined NATO are equal partners, but given the disproportionate military and economic potentials, we can conclude about the appropriate degree of influence on decision-making. Nevertheless, the geographical location near a giant industrialized state with a difficult to predict foreign policy encouraged new members to join the North Atlantic bloc. The signing of the Warsaw Pact only accelerated the process.
Turkey and Greece signed an agreement in 1952. Three years later, West Germany became a member of the alliance. In this composition, the organization existed until 1999.
True, some countries that joined NATO at times felt a catch on the part of the main founding members, expressed in the limitation of their sovereignty. President Charles de Gaulleeven suspended the participation of France in the activities of the organization, and Spain expressed its desire to limit participation in it exclusively to humanitarian operations. Greece had to leave the ranks of the defenders of democracy due to territorial disputes with Turkey over Cyprus.
The list of countries that are members of NATO has grown significantly, oddly enough, after the Soviet Union, the main object of North Atlantic fears, disappeared from the international scene. At the turn of the millennium, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary formalized their participation in the military structure, and at the end of 2002, seven more Eastern European countries, including the former Soviet republics of the B altic states, entered it.
Today, not every student will be able to answer the question of which countries are members of NATO without prompting. There are three dozen of them, including states that are clearly incapable of influencing the military balance. Some of them do not even pay an annual monetary contribution to the alliance budget. Obviously, the military bloc has not become stronger, and its goals are now formulated very vaguely. However, it is very difficult to hide the anti-Russian orientation of this structure with all the efforts of its propagandists.
