From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
North Atlantic Treaty
is the
treaty
that founded
NATO
. It was signed in
Washington, DC
on April 4, 1949.
The original twelve nations that signed it and thus became the founding members of NATO were the following:
Later the following nations joined:
When
Germany
was reunified in 1990, the country as a whole became a member of NATO.
The key section of the treaty was Article V which says that each member state has to consider an armed attack against one state to be an armed attack against all states. The treaty was created with an armed attack by the
Soviet Union
against Western Europe in mind, but the
mutual
self-defense clause was never used during the
Cold War
. It was used for the first time in 2001 when the
September 11, 2001 attacks
against the
World Trade Center
and
The Pentagon
had taken place.
In the United States, the treaty was approved by the
Senate
in a vote of 82 to 13 on July 21, 1949.
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