NATO

:This Wikipedia article uses European English spelling because of NATO's historical use of this style as a standard{{fn|1}}. NATO is also an acronym for the National Association of Theatre Owners.

History

• March 17, 1948: The Benelux countries, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the NATO Agreement.
• April 4, 1949: North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington, DC.
• May 14, 1955: Warsaw Pact treaty is signed in Warsaw by the Soviet Union and its satellite states as a formal response to NATO. Both organisations are opposing sides in the Cold War. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the Warsaw Pact disintegrates.
• 1966: Charles de Gaulle removes French armed forces from NATO's integrated military command to pursue its own nuclear defence programme. All non-French NATO troops are forced to leave France. This precipitates the relocation of the NATO Headquarters from Paris, France to Brussels, Belgium by October 16, 1967. While the political headquarters are located in Brussels the military headquarters, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), are located just south of Brussels, in the town of Mons.
• July 1, 1968: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature. NATO argued its nuclear weapons sharing arrangements did not breach the treaty as U.S. forces controlled the weapons until a decision is made to go to war, at which point the treaty would no longer be controlling. Few states knew of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangements at that time, and they were not challenged.
• May 30, 1978 NATO countries define two complementary aims of the Alliance, to maintain security and pursue détente. This is supposed to mean matching defences at the level rendered necessary by the Warsaw Pact's offensive capabilities without spurring a further arms race.
• December 12, 1979 In light of a build-up of Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities in Europe, ministers approved the deployment of US Cruise and Pershing II theatre nuclear weapons in Europe. The new warheads are also meant to strengthen the western negotiating position in regard to nuclear disarmament.
• May 30, 1982: Spain joins the alliance.
• 1983-84: Responding to the stationing of Warsaw Pact SS-20 medium-range missiles in Europe, NATO deploys modern Pershing II missiles able to reach Moscow within minutes. This action leads to bitter peace movement protests throughout Western Europe.
• May 1984: A NATO manoeuvre codenamed Able Archer, which simulates a NATO response to a Soviet nuclear attack, causes panic in the Kremlin. Soviet leader Yuri Andropov becomes concerned that U.S. President Ronald Reagan intends to launch a real first strike, and places Soviet nuclear forces at full readiness. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union does it become clear that US intelligence had mistaken real Soviet nervousness for propaganda efforts.
• October 3, 1990: With the reunification of Germany, the former East Germany becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance. This had been agreed in the Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet approval of united Germany remaining in NATO, it is agreed that there will be no new foreign military bases in the east, and that nuclear weapons will not be permanently stationed there.
• March 31, 1991: The Warsaw Pact comes to an end. It is officially dissolved on July 1, 1991. The Soviet Union collapses in December of the same year.
• February 8, 1994: NATO takes its first military action, shooting down two Bosnian Serb aircraft violating a UN no-fly zone over central Bosnia and Herzegovina. NATO airstrikes the following year help bring the war in Bosnia to an end, resulting in the Dayton Agreement.
• July 8, 1997: Three former communist countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, are invited to joined NATO. They join in 1999.
• March 24, 1999: NATO sees its first broad-scale military engagement in the Kosovo War, where it wages an 11-week bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, aimed at preventing the alleged ethnic cleansing of Albanians. It ends on June 11, 1999, when Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milo?evi? agrees to NATO's demands. It is later shown that, although the Yugoslav army was incapacitated, far less of its equipment was destroyed than NATO had estimated.
• April 1999: At the Washington summit, Germany proposes that NATO adopt a no-first-use nuclear strategy; the proposal is rejected.
• September 12, 2001: NATO provisionally invokes, for the first time in its history, the collective security clause of its charter. Article 5 states that any attack on a member state is considered an attack against the entire alliance. This comes in response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack against the United States.
• October 5, 2001: NATO confirms the invocation of Article 5, having determined that the attacks of 11 September were eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2001/1001/e1002a.htm
• November 21, 2002: During the Prague summit, seven countries are invited to start talks in order to join the Alliance: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The invited countries join NATO on March 29, 2004. Further countries express the wish to join the alliance, including Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, and Croatia. The summit also launches the NATO Response Force (NRF).
• February 10, 2003: NATO faces a crisis when France and Belgium veto the procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. Germany does not use its right to break the procedure but says it supports the veto.
• April 16, 2003: NATO agrees to take command in August of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The decision comes at the request of Germany and the Netherlands, the two nations leading ISAF at the time of the agreement. All 19 NATO ambassadors approve it unanimously. The handover of control to NATO takes place on August 11, and marked the first time in NATO's history that it takes charge of a mission outside the north Atlantic area. Canada had originally been slated to take over ISAF by itself on that date.
• June 19, 2003: A major restructuring of the NATO military commands begins as the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic was abolished and a new command, Allied Command Transformation, was established in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.
• March 29, 2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia join NATO.