In White House remarks today on the Ukraine-Russia crisis, President Biden reiterated the United States’ commitment to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Article 5 has been a key point of discussion among world leaders amid tensions between Ukraine and Russia.
Article 5 of the treaty is the principle of collective defense. It guarantees that the resources of the whole alliance can be used to protect any single member nation. This is crucial for many of the smaller countries who would be defenseless without its allies. Iceland, for example, has no standing army.
Since the US is the largest and most powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization member, any state in the alliance is effectively under US protection.
According to the NATO website, this is what Article 5 lays out:
In reality, the first and only time Article 5 has been invoked was in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US; as a result, NATO allies joined the invasion of Afghanistan.
However, NATO has taken action on other occasions too.
It put collective defense measures in place in 1991 when it deployed Patriot missiles during the Gulf War, in 2003 during the crisis in Iraq, and in 2012 in response to the situation in Syria, also with Patriot missiles.
All three were based on requests from Turkey.
Read more about NATO and Article 5 here.
Comments