What is NATO ?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO is a child of the cold war founded back in 1949 with 12 members which were United States, Canada, Iceland, Belgium, France, Portugal, United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands & Luxembourg with a common military and political alliance.
But today it has expanded to 30 members in total, 2 in North America and 28 in Europe. NATO’s power center or as we call it ‘headquarters’ is located in Brussels, Belgium. The ultimate goal of this organization is to fight forces against Russia.
Why is NATO important?
NATO has been built around the principal to provide mutual assistance to counter the risk that the Soviet Union would seek to extend its control of Eastern Europe & other parts of the continent.
NATO’s main highlight was the Collective Defense Article 5 – NATO. Tt has been built on the principle of collective defense, which means an attack on one member is considered as an attack on all of them.
Even though this article was signed in 1949, it has only been used once which was the day after 9/11 attack in the United States in which after the attack, NATO was deployed to Afghanistan.
NATO’s rivalry during the cold war was called as the War Zone pact which was signed a few years later in 1955. This is a similar alliance formed by the Soviet Union which consisted of Russia and seven other European countries.
How much does NATO spend?
Out of the 30 NATO members, 3 are nuclear powered which are the United States, United Kingdom & France. Altogether NATO forms up around 57% of the global military spending (United States providing 22% of the NATO’s budget for military)
In theory all personnel and equipment in each NATO assigned nation is available for NATO use, that means there are 3.5million active personnel & another 3.7 million in reserve.
In 2006, all 28 member states agreed to spend its 2% of their GDP on funding the NATO (Based on CNBC report, 2016)
Why did Donald Trump try to cancel NATO?
During the presidential election campaign, Donald Trump threatened to pull out the NATO treaty as he said ‘its obsolete’. He also said the United States would only help countries that paid their fair share in funding the NATO.
Based on many conversations between these leaders, NATO was always having issues with its members inside the organization as some members of the NATO weren’t paying the agreed 2% of their GDP to fund the NATO.
Can Russia stand against NATO?
Belarus on February 24,2022, the Russian forces have been involved in a large scale exercise with their allies in Belarus but this is been a front where Russia took its forces closer to the NATO countries in Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia.
The Russian president, Vlamadir Putin released a pre recorded message showing his intention to declare a special military operation meant to bring the NATO aggression to his command.
Just as soon as this happened, the Russian missile strike began in Lithuania and Latvia. The attacks were not expected as it was a training session, as per Vladmir Putin. However, Russia had an issue with targeting with their technology
Why can’t Russia target properly?
this is due to the 2014 sanctions against it and banning of dual use technology that crippled its space surveillance network. While many missiles hit their targets, many don’t. This is why many civilians were attacked while Russia fired missiles at their targets.
Russia has limited targeting capabilities compared to that of NATO’s defense equipment. Within a few hours, NATO was called in to protect the borders of it’s members.
Almost close to 5000 NATO soldiers were called for action just 48 hours after the attack along with rapid response force of 40,000 that includes combat air power and air support.
At this stage, Poland, United States and United Kingdom wanted to cut off Article 5 of NATO as Russia had nuclear power to defend its nation.
However countries like Germany were against this as their main source of Gas and other natural resources were directed from Russia.
The strength of Russia is the transportation of its soldiers and equipment along with borders across Russia with the power of its railway. However, Russia cannot supply their equipment further away from their country as they have to go through Ukraine to do so.
As Russia has supply issues when at war and issues with re supplies, the Russian troops had to back down.
Why Russia invaded Ukraine?
Since Ukraine, which is located in the borders of Russia wanted to join the NATO, this created strategic location doubt for Russia as Ukraine was just in the border of Russia.
Just before the Ukraine could join NATO, Vlamadir Putin pushed its forces toward Ukraine.
Ukraine was under the Russian rule, as Russia was the most powerful republic in the Soviet Union.
As the Soviet Union collapse in 1991, Ukraine was made independent and inherited much of Soviet arsenal which included 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 1249 nuclear warheads and 44 strategic bombers.
Ukraine shared this arsenal with Russia, whilst Russia guaranteed and promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.
That’s not all! 1 in 6 Ukrainians is an ethnic Russia and 1 in 3 Ukrainians speaks Russian and their native language and Putin believes that these two countries are ‘ONE’.
Does Ukrainians support Putin’s agenda?
Based on latest research, Ukrainians want Ukraine to be a respected sovereignty and is against the agenda of Putin.
- 70% of Ukrainians reject Putin’s statement as two countries are ‘ONE’
- 72% of Ukrainians believe Russia is a hostile state
- 33.3% Ukrainians are ready to take up arms and fight against Russia
- 21.7% Ukrainians are to stage a civil resistance to fight forces inside the country
- 67% Ukrainians wants to join the E.U.
- 59% Ukrainians want to join the NATO
Based on these facts, Ukrainians are against the agenda of Putin but however, joining NATO will push Russia to fight alone against the East part of the world.
All the countries In Europe are gradually moving towards and into the arms of NATO. The most recent news is that Finland & Sweden are planning to join the Treaty Organization to strengthen their forces (click here to read).
Both countries are officially non-aligned militarily, but public support for NATO membership has almost doubled since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to about 50% in Sweden and 60% in Finland, multiple opinion polls suggest.
With forces increasing from the side of NATO, Putin will face difficulties in protecting his motherland. But with so much of renewable and non renewable resources in his hand, do you think he will easily back down? On top of that, with so much of nuclear power?
Let me know your thoughts!
