This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on North Atlantic Treaty is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| North Atlantic Treaty | |
|---|---|
| Type of treaty | Military alliance |
| Signed - location |
1949 April 4 Washington, D.C. |
| Effective - condition |
1949 August 24 Ratification by Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States and by a majority of the other signatory states. |
| Signatories |
26
|
| Depositary | Government of the United States of America |
| Languages | French, English |
 |
Wikisource original text: North Atlantic Treaty |
.svg){kind=small}
The North Atlantic Treaty is the treaty that brought NATO into existence, 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.
During the April 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania, Croatia and Albania were officially invited to join NATO. They will sign the treaty in 2009 at a date to be determined.
The key section of the treaty was Article V which committed each member state 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 invoked during the Cold War. Rather, it was invoked for the first time in 2001 in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and The Pentagon in Operation Eagle Assist.
In the United States, the treaty was approved by the Senate in a vote of 82 to 13 on July 21, 1949.
See also
External links
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 18 June 2008, at 20:08.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "North Atlantic Treaty".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.