Category Archives: NATO

European observers detained in Ukraine are branded #39;Nato spies #39;
Pro-Russian activists say a group of European military observers seized by separatists in eastern Ukraine are #39;NATO spies #39;. In the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk, some insist the 13-strong...

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European observers detained in Ukraine are branded 'Nato spies' - Video

the North Atlantic Treaty Organizationwas originally created by representatives of twelve Western powers: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in 1949, as a military security alliance to deter the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' (USSR) expansion on the European Continent. From 1945 to 1949, to widen the Communist sphere of influence, the USSR had annexed Czechoslovakia, East Prussia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and sections of Finland, and had penetrated into the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

The foundation for NATO had been set in Brussels, Belgium, in March 1948, when representatives of Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom met to forge a mutual assistance treaty to provide a common defense system. The Brussels Treaty stipulated that should any of the five signatories be the target of armed aggression in Europe, the other treaty parties would provide the party attacked all the military aid and assistance in their power. In June 1948, after a losing battle by isolationists, the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution recommending that the United States join in a defensive pact for the North Atlantic area. President Harry S. Truman urged U.S. participation in NATO as a critical part of his policy of containment of Soviet expansion. Containment had begun with the Truman Doctrine of 1947 with military assistance to Greece and Turkey to resist Communist subversion. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949 in Washington, D.C. It formally committed the European signatories and the United States and Canada to the defense of Western Europe. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, 82 to 13. This treaty marked a fundamental departure with tradition of the United States because it was Washington's first peacetime military alliance since the FrancoAmerican Alliance of 1778. In October 1949, in the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, Congress authorized $1.3 billion in military aid for NATO. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952. The Federal Republic of Germany joined in 1955 following an agreement on the termination of the Allies' postwar occupation of West Germany and an understanding that the country would maintain foreign forces on its soil. A rearmed Germany became a major component of NATO.

The USSR strongly opposed the NATO alliance. The Berlin Blockade in 194748 and the threat of war had in fact given impetus to the creation of NATO. Following the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, fearing the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe as a result of a miscalculation by Moscow, NATO countries expanded their military forces in Europe. Allied forces in Western Europe numbered twelve divisions to deter a Soviet threat of eighty divisions. The sending of several U.S. divisions to Europe was strongly debated in the U.S. Congress. Proponents of isolationism, including former President Herbert Hoover and Senator Robert Taft, opposed the assignment of ground troops to Europe. Others, including retired Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supported an increase in the U.S. commitment to the Cold War and urged expansion of NATO forces. The isolationists lost, and Truman in 1951 added four more to the two divisions already in Germany to bring the Seventh U.S. Army to six divisions. Truman also brought Eisenhower out of retirement to become Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), following the creation of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in 1951. NATO ministers, in the Lisbon Agreement on NATO Force Levels of February 1952, set new force goals for 1954 consisting of 10,000 aircraft and 89 divisions, half of them combatready. These were unrealistic; but by 1953, NATO had fielded 25 active divisions, 15 in Central Europe, and 5,200 aircraft, making it at least equal to Soviet forces in East Germany. In 1955, Moscow created the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance composed of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

EastWest relations were further strained by Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as the Soviet leader after Josef Stalin's death in 1953. Although he had criticized Stalin's dictatorship and had accused his predecessor of escalating international tensions, Khrushchev ordered a Soviet force into Hungary to suppress a rebellion and maintain Communist rule in 1956. In 1957, the USSR's launching of Sputnik, the first of the space satellites, indicated that the Soviet Union was developing longrange nuclear missiles. NATO had planned in 1954 to use nuclear weapons in case of a massive Soviet invasion. In 1957, it planned to make the thirty NATO divisions and its tactical aircraft nuclearcapable. By 1960, NATO's commander, SACEUR, probably had some 7,000 nuclear weapons; but two SACEURs, Gen. Alfred Gruenther and Gen. Lauris Norstad, warned of NATO's declining conventional capabilities as a result of reductions or redeployments in British and French forces.

During the 1960s, French president Charles de Gaulle rejected the lead of the United States and Britain in Europe and pushed for a larger diplomatic role for France. The French developed their own nuclear capacity; then, in 1966, while still remaining a part of the NATO community, France withdrew its troops from the alliance and requested that NATO's headquarters and all allied units and installations not under the control of French authorities be removed from French soil. NATO headquarters officially opened in October 1967, in Brussels, where it has remained. East and West efforts to achieve peaceful coexistence decreased a year later when the Soviet Union and four of its satellite nations invaded Czechoslovakia.

In an effort to reach an era of detente, a relaxation of tensions reached through reciprocal beneficial relations between East and West, the Nixon administration took the lead with the Leonid Brezhnev government in Moscow, and NATO members and Warsaw Pact members opened the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in November 1969. In May 1972, the first series of SALT Treaties was signed. The following year a SALT II agreement was reached, although it was never ratified by the United States. Further efforts during the 1970s for EastWest balanced force reductions proved unsuccessful. The ArabIsraeli War did little to ease world tensions when it erupted on 6 October 1973, after which the Soviets implied that they might intervene in the crisis due to the strategic importance of oil reserves in that part of the world. A year later, Brezhnev accused NATO of creating a multinational nuclear force and called for cancelation of the alliance as a first step toward world peace. In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan and that ongoing conflict caused the suspension of negotiations between the United States and the USSR on reductions in intermediaterange nuclear forces (INF) that had opened in 1981. Talks resumed in 1984 primarily to prevent the militarization of outer space and then led to negotiations on arms control and disarmament. Reformer Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in March 1985, and that October he met President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss ceilings of 100 nuclear missile warheads for each side (none of which would remain in Europe) and 100 residual warheads to remain in Soviet Asia and on U.S. territories in the Pacific. Verification arrangements were also agreed upon for the first time.

By the end of the 1980s, dramatic changes had occurred in the Warsaw Pact countries. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened, which led the way to a unified Germany ten months later. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania took steps toward breaking from Soviet domination. When Russian troops were withdrawn from Eastern Europe in 1990, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. In response to these events, NATO members at a summit conference in London in July 1990 declared that they no longer considered the Soviets to be an adversary and laid plans for a new strategic concept that was adopted in 1991 in Rome. The concept reaffirmed the significance of collective defense to meet evolving security threatsparticularly from civil wars and massive refugee problemsand established the basis for peacekeeping operations, as well as coalition crisis management both inside and outside the NATO area. It also stressed cooperation and partnership with the emerging democracies of the former Warsaw Pact.

The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) was created in 1991 to draw former Soviet republics, as well as the Baltic states and Albania, into a closer relationship with NATO countries. The same year, the Soviet Union established diplomatic links with NATO and joined the NACC on a foreign ministerial level. Hungary and Romania entered a twentyfivenation Partnership for Peace (PFP), an arm of NATO created in 1994. The PFP administers exercises, exchanges, and other military contacts to encourage military reform. The partnership also provides for peacekeeping, humanitarian, and rescue operations. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic aspired to become full members of NATO, and debate opened on a secondtier Russian NATO membership allowing for political, but not military, integration for the former Soviet Union. In June 1994, Russian leader Boris Yeltsin announced that the Russians would join the PFP, but Russian fears of an eastward expansion of NATO remained a contentious issue.

In 1992, due to the escalation of the Bosnian Crisis, and Serbia's armed support of the Bosnian Serbs against Muslims and Croats, NATO's mission was expanded to include peacekeeping operations in support of United Nations (UN) efforts to restrain the fighting and find a solution to the conflict. In July 1992, NATO ships and aircraft commenced monitoring operations in support of the UN arms embargoes on Serbia and Bosnia from the former Yugoslavia. In April 1993, NATO aircraft began patrolling the skies over Bosnia to monitor and enforce the UN ban on Serbian military aircraft. In November 1995, following U.S.sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, a peace agreement was signed in Paris in December calling for a MuslimCroat federation and a Serb entity in Bosnia. During 1996, fourteen nonNATO countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Ukraine) were invited to contribute to the NATOled Implementation Force (IFOR). All the NATO countries with armed forces (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States) pledged to contribute military forces to the operation, and Iceland provided medical personnel. With 60,000 troops, 20,000 of them from the U.S. forces, IFOR was the largest military operation ever undertaken by NATO. It was the first ground force operation, the first deployment out of area, and the first joint operation with NATO's PFP partners and other nonNATO countries. NATO's IFOR halted the pitched battles and urban sieges that ravaged Bosnia during the fouryear war. National elections were held in September 1996, and plans were made for a reduced IFOR force.

The collapse of Communism in Europe led NATO to search for new roles beyond that of a mutual defense pact. One was to bolster democracy and national security in former Warsaw bloc nations; consequently in March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were made members of NATO. The other new role for NATO was as a regional policeman seeking to restrict ethnic wars, terrorism, and the generation of massive flows of refugees through genocidal violence. Consequently, as a result of military and paramilitary actions by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic against hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo, NATO in late March 1999 began a military offensive against Serbian forces and installations By April 1999, when the 50th anniversary of the establishment of NATO was observed, NATO forces in the Kosovo Crisis were engaged in the largest military assault in Europe since World War II. The NATO air offensive ended successfully with the Serbian forces withdrawal from Kosovo in June and the establishment of a UN administered and NATO implemented peacekeeping force there. With the end of the Cold War (and NATO's first war), a new era for NATO had clearly emerged.

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NATO: Definition from Answers.com - Answers - The Most ...

Coordinates: 505234.16N 42519.24E / 50.8761556N 4.4220111E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; //; French: Organisation du trait de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence 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 22countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, with 15other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the global total.[4] Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2% of GDP.[5]

NATO was little more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the organization's member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasiondoubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966 for 30 years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004.

Article5 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,[6] 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 operations[7] and in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. 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[8] and by Poland in 2014 following the Russian intervention in Crimea.[9]

The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Union's Defence Organization in September 1948. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism, so talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately resulting in the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C. on 4April 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.[11] The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Popular support for the Treaty was not unanimous, and some Icelanders participated in a pro-neutrality, anti-membership riot in March 1949. The creation of NATO can be seen as the primary institutional consequence of a school of thought called Atlanticism which stressed the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation.[13]

The members agreed that an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all. Consequently they agreed that, if an armed attack occurred, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence, would assist the member being attacked, taking such action as it deemed necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. The treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor. Although obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so. This differs from ArticleIV of the Treaty of Brussels, which clearly states that the response will be military in nature. It is nonetheless assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily. The treaty was later clarified to include both the member's territory and their "vessels, forces or aircraft" above the Tropic of Cancer, including some Overseas departments of France.[14]

The creation of NATO brought about some standardization of allied military terminology, procedures, and technology, which in many cases meant European countries adopting U.S. practices. The roughly 1300Standardization Agreements (STANAG) codified many of the common practices that NATO has achieved. Hence, the 7.6251 NATO rifle cartridge was introduced in the 1950s as a standard firearm cartridge among many NATO countries. Fabrique Nationale de Herstal's FAL, which used 7.62 NATO cartridge, was adopted by 75 countries, including many outside of NATO. Also, aircraft marshalling signals were standardized, so that any NATO aircraft could land at any NATO base. Other standards such as the NATO phonetic alphabet have made their way beyond NATO into civilian use.

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent threat of all Communist countries working together, and forced the alliance to develop concrete military plans. SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, was formed as a consolidated command structure, and began work under Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1951.[17] The 1952 Lisbon conference, seeking to provide the forces necessary for NATO's Long-Term Defence Plan, called for an expansion to ninety-six divisions. However this requirement was dropped the following year to roughly thirty-five divisions with heavier use to be made of nuclear weapons. At this time, NATO could call on about fifteen ready divisions in Central Europe, and another ten in Italy and Scandinavia. Also at Lisbon, the post of Secretary General of NATO as the organization's chief civilian was created, and Lord Ismay was eventually appointed to the post.[20]

In September 1952, the first major NATO maritime exercises began; Exercise Mainbrace brought together 200 ships and over 50,000 personnel to practice the defence of Denmark and Norway.[21] Other major exercises that followed included Exercise Grand Slam and Exercise Longstep, naval and amphibious exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, Italic Weld, a combined air-naval-ground exercise in northern Italy, Grand Repulse, involving the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR), the Netherlands Corps and Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), Monte Carlo, a simulated atomic air-ground exercise involving the Central Army Group, and Weldfast, a combined amphibious landing exercise in the Mediterranean Sea involving British, Greek, Italian, Turkish, and U.S. naval forces.[22]

Greece and Turkey also joined the alliance in 1952, forcing a series of controversial negotiations, in which the United States and Britain were the primary disputants, over how to bring the two countries into the military command structure.[17] While this overt military preparation was going on, covert stay-behind arrangements initially made by the Western European Union to continue resistance after a successful Soviet invasion, including Operation Gladio, were transferred to NATO control. Ultimately unofficial bonds began to grow between NATO's armed forces, such as the NATO Tiger Association and competitions such as the Canadian Army Trophy for tank gunnery.[23][24]

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NATO - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Business Insider Wed 23 Apr 2014 The 11 Most Powerful Militaries In The World Asymmetrical wars in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and now in Syria demonstrate all too clearly that relatively small numbers of belligerents can carry out successful military operations against superior... (photo: AP / Mark Lennihan) Defence Militaries Photos Wikipedia: List of countries by military expenditures World National Journal Wed 23 Apr 2014 U.S. Sending Troops to Eastern Europe, Must Turn Over Info on CIA Prisons, Apaches Headed to Egypt By Jordain Carney Follow on Twitter April 23, 2014 By Jordain Carney ( @jordainc) Welcome to NJ's Early Bird, today's best national security, defense, and foreign policy coverage. To contact us, email... (photo: USMC / Zachery B. Martin) Egypt Europe Photos Troops Wikipedia: Troop Top Stories more Headlines Novosti Tue 22 Apr 2014 ANALYSIS: NATO Build Up in Poland Threatens International Stability WASHINGTON, April 22 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova NATOs military build-up in Poland is a dangerous and provocative development which might lead to... (photo: US DoD) Nato Photos Poland Washington Wikipedia: NATO The Daily Telegraph Tue 22 Apr 2014 US troop numbers in Afghanistan may drop below 10,000 Related Articles Deal for US troops to stay in Afghanistan 'will be signed soon' 07 Dec 2013 The 'living hell' of patrol in Afghanistan 02 Dec 2013 Karzai's refusal to... (photo: USMC / Zachery B. Martin) Afghanistan Karzai Photos US Troops Wikipedia: Afghanistan Khaleej Times Mon 21 Apr 2014 Bidens Ukraine agenda Diplomatic pressure is now showing on Russia. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovs remark that Ukraine is to be blamed for violating the Geneva accord is incomprehensive... (photo: AP / Sergei Chuzavkov) Geneva Photos Russia Ukraine Wikipedia: Joe Biden CNN Mon 21 Apr 2014 How Obama can avoid lame-duck blues April 21, 2014 -- Updated 1235 GMT (2035 HKT) Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of... (photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Barack Obama Photos Politics US Wikipedia: Barack Obama Detroit news Mon 21 Apr 2014 Obama must defend NATO's red line Michael Barone Comments Last week, masked men in camouflage garb with no insignia, dressed and equipped like Russian special forces, started taking over police stations... (photo: AP / LM Otero) Barack Obama Nato Photos US Wikipedia: Barack Obama The Telegraph India Mon 21 Apr 2014 In Cold War rerun, Obama plans to isolate Russia PETER BAKER Putin, Obama Washington, April ... Washington, April 20: Even as the crisis in Ukraine continues to defy easy resolution, President Barack Obama and his national security team are looking beyond the... (photo: AP / Carolyn Kaster) Photos Russia Ukraine Washington Wikipedia: Barack Obama

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From New World Encyclopedia

Coordinates: 505234.16N, 42519.24E

NATO countries shown in green

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); French: Organisation du Trait de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN); (also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, or the Western Alliance) is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the organization constitutes a system of collective defense in which its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The first NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay, famously described the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down".[2] Throughout the Cold War doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defense against a prospective Soviet invasiondoubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure from 1966.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization became drawn into the Balkans while building better links with former potential enemies to the east, which culminated with the former Warsaw Pact states joining the alliance. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, NATO has attempted to refocus itself to new challenges and has deployed troops to Afghanistan and trainers to Iraq.

The Treaty of Brussels, signed on March 17, 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Union's Defense Organization in September 1948.[3] However, participation of the United States was thought necessary in order to counter the military power of the USSR, and therefore talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately.

These talks resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states, as well as the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Support for the Treaty was not unanimous; Iceland suffered an anti-NATO riot in March 1949 which may have been Communist-inspired. Three years later, on 18 February 1952, Greece and Turkey also joined.

The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. Consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense will assist the Party or Parties being attacked, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force does not necessarily mean that other member states will respond with military action against the aggressor(s). Rather they are obliged to respond, but maintain the freedom to choose how they will respond. This differs from Article IV of the Treaty of Brussels (which founded the Western European Union) which clearly states that the response must include military action. It is however often assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member militarily. Further, the article limits the organization's scope to Europe and North America, which explains why the invasion of the British Falkland Islands did not result in NATO involvement.

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NATO - New World Encyclopedia

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Formed in 1949 with the signing of the Washington Treaty, NATO is a security alliance of 28 countriesfrom North America and Europe. NATO's fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies' freedom and security by political and military means. NATO remains the principal security instrument of the transatlantic community and expression of its common democratic values. It is the practical means through which the security of North America and Europe are permanently tied together. NATO enlargement has furthered the U.S. goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

Article 5 of the Washington Treaty -- that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all -- is at the core of the Alliance, a promise of collective defense. Article 4 of the treaty ensures consultations among Allies on security matters of common interest, which have expanded from a narrowly defined Soviet threat to the critical mission in Afghanistan, as well as peacekeeping in Kosovo and new threats to security such as cyber attacks, and global threats such as terrorism and piracy that affect the Alliance and its global network of partners.

In addition to its traditional role in the territorial defense of Allied nations, NATO leads the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has ongoing missions in the Balkans andthe Mediterranean; it also conducts extensive training exercises and offers security support to partners around the globe, including the European Union in particular but also the United Nations and the African Union.

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NATO - State

Tom Durkin, the attorney for NATO 3 defendant Jared Chase, told reporters today that the case was 'politically motivated.'

Cook County prosecutors raised the specter of the Boston Marathon bombings in asking for hefty sentences for three alleged anarchists convicted of making crude Molotov cocktails in the lead-up to the 2012 NATO summit, but a judge ended up imposing more modest prison terms Friday that could result in their release in less than two years.

Judge Thaddeus Wilson took the middle ground, sentencing the so-called NATO 3 to between 5 and 8 years in prison, well below the 14 years sought by prosecutors but more than the time served wanted by the defense.

Wilson perhaps best explained his rationale by saying that the out-of-town men hadnt been as cunning as the Three Musketeers as portrayed by prosecutors or as bungling as the Three Stooges as the defense contended.

The three-week trial of Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly marked the first test in Cook County of a state terrorism law enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. In a blow for States Attorney Anita Alvarez, a jury in February acquitted all three of the more serious terrorism charges but convicted them of felony counts of possessing an incendiary device and misdemeanor mob action.

Prosecutors alleged that they had plotted attacks on police stations, President Barack Obamas campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuels home. But the defense, bolstered by undercover police recordings that prosecutors played in court, argued that the three were goofs who talked big and were goaded on by two police officers working their first undercover investigation.

In court Friday, Assistant States Attorney Jack Blakey credited strong police work and good fortune with preventing an attack like the Boston bombings that killed three and injured 264. He argued for stiff prison sentences, saying the three defendants remained unrepentant.

They are a disaster waiting to happen, he told the judge.

But defense attorneys blasted prosecutors for the comparison, saying it was a further sign of their overzealous efforts in a case that was overcharged and rebuffed by jurors.

We have a prosecutor with the mentality of the Spanish Inquisition, said Thomas Anthony Durkin, Chases attorney.

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NATO 3 get prison terms ranging from 5 to 8 years

CHICAGO (AP) Three protesters acquitted of terrorism for plotting Molotov cocktail attacks in Chicago during a NATO summit were sentenced to prison terms Friday of between five and eight years on lesser arson and mob-action charges.

Among the targets the activists discussed attacking during the 2012 event, prosecutors say, was President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house and police facilities.

Despite their acquittals during a February trial on all terrorism counts brought under a rarely used Illinois statute the issue remained at the forefront of Friday's five-hour sentencing hearing.

Judge Thaddeus Wilson raised it himself in his remarks minutes before imposing the sentences, saying the plan to lob gas-filled bottles at the targets, had it been carried out, would have struck fear in the city.

"It might not be terrorism," the Cook County circuit judge said. "But it is terrorizing."

All three were convicted of the same charges, but Brian Church, 22, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., ended up getting the shortest sentence five years. Jared Chase, 29, of Keene, N.H., got the longest, 8 years; and Brent Betterly, 26, of Oakland Park, got six years.

With credit for their two years in jail awaiting trial, all three could end up serving less than a third of their designated sentences. Church could be out in less than a year.

The decision by Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to prosecute the three under the state's terrorism statute raised eyebrows at the time. A conviction on that charge carries a maximum life sentence.

Lead prosecutor Jack Blakey began his statement urging Wilson to hand all three men 14-year sentences by referring to the Boston Marathon bombings one year ago, which left three people dead and hundreds injured.

"Why bring up Boston? Because in Boston there were no undercover (police) to intercede," Blakey said. He suggested that only the successful infiltration of Chicago police posing as activists stopped the defendants from creating similar mayhem.

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NATO Protesters Receive 5- To 8-Year Prison Terms