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What is NATO?

NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance formed on April 4, 1949, when twelve countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty. The twelve original NATO countries are Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain, and the United States. Each member nation agreed to treat attacks on any other member nation as if it were an attack on itself. Any aggressor would have to face the twelve-nation alliance. This was NATO's policy of deterrence, which was a way to discourage attacks by the Soviet Union or other Eastern bloc countries (Communist countries in Eastern Europe). NATO provided the additional benefit of discouraging fighting among the member nations.

Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, followed by West Germany in 1955 and then Spain in 1982. After the fall of communism (a system of government in which the state controls...

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