Why was the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization significant to the American foreign policy?

Barnett, Richard J. The Alliance: America, Europe, Japan, Makers of the Postwar World. New York, 1983.

Baylis, John. The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO, 1942–1949. Basingstoke, U.K., 1992.

Calleo, David. The Atlantic Fantasy: The U.S., NATO, and Europe. Baltimore, 1970.

Cornish, Paul. Partnership in Crisis: The U.S., Europe, and the Fall and Rise of NATO. London, 1997.

Di Nolfo, Ennio, ed. The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Appraisal. Berlin, 1991. Essays published on the occasion of NATO's fortieth anniversary in 1989.

Duffield, John S. Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO's Conventional Force Posture. Stanford, Calif., 1995. See for the development of NATO's conventional and nuclear strategies.

Gregory, Shaun. Nuclear Command and Control in NATO: Nuclear Weapons Operations and the Strategy of Flexible Response. Basingstoke, U.K., 1996.

Heller, Francis H., and John R. Gillingham, eds. NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe. New York, 1992.

Heuser, Beatrice. NATO, Britain, France, and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000. Basingstoke, U.K., 1997.

Ireland, Timothy P. Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. London, 1981.

Kaplan, Lawrence S. The United States and NATO: The Formative Years. Lexington, Ky., 1984.

——. NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance. Updated ed. New York and Toronto, 1994.

——. The Long Entanglement: NATO's First Fifty Years. Westport, Conn., 1999. A useful collection of the author's journal articles on NATO.

Kaplan, Lawrence S., ed. American Historians and the Atlantic Alliance. Kent, Ohio, 1991. The very different views of American historians on NATO.

Martin, Pierre, and Mark R. Brundy, eds. Alliance Politics: Kosovo and NATO's War: Allied Force or Forced Allies? Basingstoke, U.K., 2001.

Mattox, Gale A., and Arthur R. Rachwald, eds. Enlarging NATO: The National Debates. Boulder, Colo., 2001.

Menon, Anand. France, NATO, and the Limits of Independence, 1981–1997: The Politics of Ambivalence. Basingstoke, U.K., and New York, 2000. Covers France's ambiguous attitude toward U.S. domination of NATO.

Norton, Augustus R., comp. NATO: A Bibliography and Resource Guide. New York and London, 1985.

Osgood, Robert E. NATO: The Entangling Alliance. Chicago, 1962. One of the first and a still useful scholarly books dealing with the creation of NATO.

Sandler, Todd M., and Keith Hartely. The Political Economy of NATO: Past, Present and Into the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge and New York, 1999.

Schmidt, Gustav, ed. A History of NATO. New York, 2001. One of the best overviews of the history of NATO by a plethora of experts, based on conferences held on NATO's fiftieth anniversary in 1999.

Schwartz, David N. NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas. Washington, D.C., 1983. See for the development of NATO's conventional and nuclear strategies.

Smith, Mark. NATO Enlargement During the Cold War: Strategy and System in the Western Alliance. Basingstoke, U.K., 2000.

Thomas, Ian Q. R. The Promise of Alliance: NATO and the Political Imagination. Lanham, Md., 1997. A highly interest approach to the history of NATO with a focus on the organization's political culture and its political dimensions and goals.

Williams, Geoffrey Lee, and Barkley Jared Jones. NATO and the Transatlantic Alliance in the Twenty-First Century: The Twenty-Year Crisis. Basingstoke, U.K., 2001.

Yost, David S. NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Role in International Security. Washington, D.C., 1998.

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Formed in 1949 with the signing of the Washington Treaty, NATO is a security alliance of 30 countries from North America and Europe. NATO’s fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies’ freedom and security by political and military means. NATO remains the principal security instrument of the transatlantic community and expression of its common democratic values. It is the practical means through which the security of North America and Europe are permanently tied together. NATO enlargement has furthered the U.S. goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

Article 5 of the Washington Treaty — that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all — is at the core of the Alliance, a promise of collective defense. Article 4 of the treaty ensures consultations among Allies on security matters of common interest, which have expanded from a narrowly defined Soviet threat to the critical mission in Afghanistan, as well as peacekeeping in Kosovo and new threats to security such as cyber attacks, and global threats such as terrorism and piracy that affect the Alliance and its global network of partners.

In addition to its traditional role in the territorial defense of Allied nations, NATO leads the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has ongoing missions in the Balkans and the Mediterranean; it also conducts extensive training exercises and offers security support to partners around the globe, including the European Union in particular but also the United Nations and the African Union.

The NATO Alliance consists of 30 member states from North America and Europe. Article Five of the treaty states that if an armed attack occurs against one of the member states, it should be considered an attack against all members, and other members shall assist the attacked member, with armed forces if necessary.

Over the past two decades, the Alliance has developed a network of structured partnerships with countries from the Euro-Atlantic area, the Mediterranean and the Gulf region, as well as individual relationships with other partners across the globe. NATO pursues dialogue and practical cooperation with many partner countries and engages actively with other international actors and organisations on a wide range of political and security-related issues.

The primary role of Alliance military forces is to protect peace and to guarantee the territorial integrity, political independence and security of the member states. Alliance forces must be able to deter and defend effectively. The Alliance remains subject to a wide variety of military and non-military risks that are multi-directional and often difficult to predict.

• List of current NATO Exercises

The term NATO Military Exercise includes all exercises for which NATO is the initiating or the joint initiating authority. Associated with NATO Military Exercises are building blocks, such as: seminars, study periods and workshops.

A NATO Military Exercise is scheduled by a NATO Commander. It aims to establish, enhance and display NATO’s Military Capability across the Alliance’s full mission spectrum which is based on the three Alliance military missions:

• Article 5 Collective Defence;
• Non-Article 5 Crisis Response; and
• Consultation and Co-operation.

Foreign Ministers Meetings and Defense Ministers Meetings provide an opportunity for NATO Allies to address many of NATO’s most pressing security challenges at the some of the highest levels of government. Key strategic issues discussed at these meetings have included Afghanistan, Capabilities, Kosovo, and Missile Defense. Generally attended also by many of NATO’s partners, these meetings are a chance for NATO to strengthen its relationships around the world.

As a political and military alliance, what we do together at NATO directly contributes to the security, the prosperity, and liberty of the people of the United States and every Ally.Our NATO links are solid, forged over 70 years of history. NATO promotes democratic values and encourages consultation and cooperation on defense and security issues to build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict. NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military capacity needed to undertake crisis-management operations. These are carried out under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty — NATO’s founding treaty — or under a UN mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organizations. In the history of NATO,  Article 5 has been invoked just once, and that was in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.