NATO

Essay by escadaHigh School, 11th grade March 2007

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During the mid 1940's the world started fearing of another uprising similar to Hitler's uprising. Soon after world war two began, the world community started taking precautions to try and avoid another uprising. It was on April 4th, 1949 when the international community decided to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization also knows as NATO. NATO headquarters are located at Brussels, Belgium. The original purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe from the growing fear of an attack by the USSR. The other main purpose of NATO was to revive Europe's economy and its' national governments. The military was dependant on the United States' arsenal. The original countries that made up NATO were e Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Later on, Greece and Turkey joined the alliance in 1952, West Germany joined 1955 under arrangements that it would be allowed to make nuclear or biological weapons, and Spain in 1982.

In 1990, Germany as we know it today replaced West Germany in 1990. The last nations to join the alliance were Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic which joined in March 1999. Currently some of the top issues NATO is dealing with are Iraq, Operational capabilities, Command Structure, NATO response force, Terrorism, and trafficking in human beings.

Iraq is most definitely on the top of NATO's agenda as of today. NATO does not combat in the Iraq war, what it does is help build an Iraqi military and government so that Iraq will be an independent country with its' own self controlling government. It also imports supplies to countries which are part of NATO to help in the war efforts. NATO was not involved in IRAQ for a long time, as a matter of fact it...