Could the United States let go of its allies? Donald Trump remains very elusive about his commitment to defending NATO members even before his arrival, on Tuesday, at the top of the Alliance in The Hague (Netherlands), yet gathered to undertake to spend more, in accordance with his requirements. Article 5 can “define itself in several ways,” he said on the plane transporting him to the Netherlands. This article, the cornerstone of the Alliance, poses the principle of mutual defense: if a member country is attacked, all the others are related to its rescue. But what exactly does he say?
Adopted in 1949, with the rest of the treaty, with the aim of “countering the risk of seeing the Soviet Union extend the control it exercised over Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent”, specifies NATO on its site, article 5 provides “that an armed attack on one or [des membres] occurring in Europe or North America will be considered an attack on all parties. ” It was only invoked once, just after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
A Mutual Assistance Principle
The following article defines an armed attack as that perpetrated “against the territory” of one of the parties. Also concerned are “the forces, ships or aircraft of one of the parties in these territories”, but also elsewhere in Europe “where the occupation forces of one of the parties were stationed on the date on which the treaty entered into force”, or even “located on the Mediterranean Sea or in the North Atlantic region north of the Tropic of Cancer, or above them”.
In the case of an attack, article 5 poses that “each […] will assist the part or the parties thus attacked by immediately taking, individually and in agreement with the other parties, as action that it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and ensure security in the North Atlantic region, “specifies the text.
A response “not necessarily military”
On its site, NATO specifies that the possible response “is not necessarily military in nature” and is “according to the material resources available to each country”. If “each member country is free to determine the way it wishes to contribute”, assistance to an attacked member is “an individual obligation incumbent on each ally”.
If Article 5 is formulated in this way, it is because of a disagreement, between the United States and the other countries, on the procedures for implementation at the time of writing the Treaty. “European member countries wanted to ensure that the United States would automatically help if one of the signatories were to be attacked,” said the NATO site, while “the United States, on the other hand, did not want to make such a commitment”.
A crucial summit
An artistic vagueness which will be at the center of the summit which begins this Tuesday, during which the 32 countries of the organization will confirm their commitment to devote at least 5 % of their GDP to their security expenses by 2035. This percentage was claimed by the American president, failing which he threatened to no longer defend “bad payers”.
Our file on NATO
By meeting this requirement, the European NATO countries hoped in return a firm commitment from the United States, in accordance with article 5 of the Treaty of the Alliance. “Five is the magic figure” of the summit: 5 % and article 5, summarized a European diplomat in Brussels shortly before this summit.
