NATO celebrates 75 years of collective defense across Europe and North America 

NATO is celebrating 75 years of collective defense across Europe and North America today. At a cake-cutting ceremony in Brussels, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts will mark the moment the alliance’s founding treaty was signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington. A bigger celebration is planned when NATO leaders meet in Washington from July 9 to 11.

The alliance’s ranks have almost tripled over more than seven decades from its 12 founding members.

That promise – Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which has been shipped to Brussels for the ceremony – stipulates that an attack on any one of their number must be met with a united response. It’s only ever been used once, after the Al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil in 2001.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on the eve of the anniversary that the NATO was founded on a single, solemn promise: An attack on one ally is an attack on all.

Blinken described NATO as a defensive alliance with no designs on the territory of any other country, but with a determination to protect the territory of each of its members and to do it in a way that has been unique in human history.”

At the other end of the scale lies the operation in Afghanistan. NATO took command of the security effort in 2003 and it became the longest, costliest and deadliest in alliance history. It was marked by a chaotic retreat in August 2021.