The Committee

NATO, also known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or North Atlantic Alliance, consists of 31 member countries. While 29 of these member states are European countries, 2 are North American countries. In short, NATO is a military operations institution gathered under the joint control of all member states and with their contributions. The organization was founded approximately during the Second World War and is the party that established the North Atlantic Treaty. As mentioned before, NATO is a military operations organization, and the countries within it are obliged to look after each other's interests and protect each other against outside countries. The main purpose of NATO's establishment was to negotiate with the Soviet Union in its early years. We can understand that they were successful in their goals from the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but this did not cause them to stop their activities. Even though the Soviet Union dissolved, NATO continued its activities. He carried out military operations all over the world.

Although NATO's headquarters, known as its main base and the source of many meetings and declarations, is in Brussels, Belgium, the military leg of the union is stationed near Mons, another city in Belgium. The total number of soldiers and personnel gathered within the alliance is close to 3.5 million these days. When the calendar showed 2022, NATO's military expenditures covered approximately 60 percent of the global total. NATO, which covers this budget from the GDPs of the member countries, decided in the last meetings to transfer 2 percent of the GDP of the countries in the union allocated to military expenditures to the union.

NATO was founded with 12 countries in its early days, and then the number of member countries increased to 31. Finland became a NATO country as recently as April 4, 2023, and Sweden's potential membership is being discussed these days. In addition to these 31 countries, NATO also has 3 candidate countries, these are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine. Considering the history of NATO and Russia, the policy towards increasing the number of member countries and the growth of NATO has led to an increase in tension between the two sides.