Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members, and triggers an obligation for each member to come to its assistance.
From the nato.int website. It reads to me that if a country refuses to come to the assistance of a country legitimately invoking the article, the country is breaching the treaty.
will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Depends what your definition of defence is though, doesn’t it. NATO could just be considered to be defence of peace in which case yeah you could have a mandate to intervene in certain situations and it would still be in defensive peace.
I think you’re trying to make a distinction without a purpose.
I think it’s my mistake for wording my comment in such a way that it sounds like I think the intervention in Yugoslavia was bad. That was not the point I was making, but I see how it could be interpreted as such.
Your mistake is disagreeing with a comment that said “NATO good”. The nature of the disagreement is irrelevant. It’s the centrist form of the tankie purity test.
In light of the other thread, you might be thinking of 1995. 1999 was a bit more like Iraq II, but more members participated since the genocide wasn’t just a thing Dick Cheney made up.
NATO these days spends a lot of time just negotiating with itself to actually set up any defences, so these stories about the UN calling up NATO and saying “please bomb here”, and then NATO just going “okay”, are kind of alien to me.
S/RES/1199 doesn’t authorize any kind of enforcement. It makes demands of a ceasefire, endorses observers, and threatens to “consider further action”, but doesn’t actually give any mandate for anything.
Yea… poor Yugoslavia that already faced three UN resolutions concluding their violation of basic human rights wasn’t allowed to go on with their ethnic cleansing. Shocking! /s
Now your moving the goal post. I’m not arguing about if the UN is effective or not. Just arguing that the UN didn’t sanction the bombing, unlike you implied.
If there’s ethnic cleansing going on, do you want to wait for the UN to act (in vain, because veto powers) or do you act based on the principles the UN should act on if it actually worked?
Because let’s not pretend that the UN actually decided on the substance of that matter and decided against it based on what was happening. It never decided solely due to political reasons and its architecture.
If you want to hold that against NATO, fine. Sometimes, being technically correct isn’t the thing to aspire.
The very premise that NATO, a military alliance consisting of the terrorist state and world hegemon USA and its vassals (the so-called global north, basically), does act on principles regarding human suffering in other countries is not based in material reality, but propagandised ideology.
Well… in the case we’re talking about here, the occuring violations of basic human rights were very tangible and real and not ‘propagandised ideology’.
…does ethnic cleansing under Netanyahu’s power-hungry expansionism, you’d be as justified removing Netanyahu from power. Problem is: that path necessarily leads towards conflict with the US and so far, I can’t see any US near-peers capable and willing to do so. The point still stands, though.
At least in that circumstance there were already active hostilities that did threaten to flood NATO countries with Albanian refugees trying to escape ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and a strong possibility that the conflict would expand into NATO states.
In this war with Iran there is nothing but Israeli bloodthirst and an American President who desperately needs a distraction and something to regroup his base.
How do you get there from what was an ongoing genocide and an immanent threat? Has NATO ever bombed a country because they might attack in 30 years? There is your answer.
Well, Iran having nukes could also be seen as an imminent threat. I just don’t see why one thing would be seen as defensive and the other thing wouldn’t be.
Iran was not about to have nukes. If you listen to Netanyahu, Iran has been a week away from having nukes for decades.
If Iran did get nukes, why would that be a threat? You think Iran would be interested in putting their arsenal up against the United States? Using a nuke would be national suicide. All it would do is provide them protection from regime change wars.
After popular pressure, NATO was asked by the United Nations to intervene in the Bosnian War after allegations of war crimes against civilians were made.
On 6 February 1994, a day after the first Markale marketplace massacre, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali formally requested NATO to confirm that air strikes would be carried out immediately.[12] On 9 February, agreeing to the request of the UN, NATO authorized the Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples (CINCSOUTH), US Admiral Jeremy Boorda, to launch air strikes against artillery and mortar positions in and around Sarajevo that were determined by UNPROFOR to be responsible for attacks against civilian targets.
Well duh, it’s a defensive alliance.
Tell that to the people of yugoslavia in 1999
That was a humanitarian intervention to STOP a genocide.
I bet most were happy that the Serbians were reigned in. Even many Serbians.
NATO has intervened in situations where they had a UN mandate.
Should’ve bombed Israel while there was still something left of Gaza then
Absolutely. But USA has gotten steadily worse, esp. since Bush.
83 upvotes for this… Man this species is doomed…
Also NATO in 1999 had used military force without the expressed endorsement of the UN Security Council and international legal approval.
Ah, so it’s not a defensive alliance. Thanks for confirming.
No it is, since not every member participated.
The whole operation was voluntary. The only reason it gets a NATO sticker is because only NATO members participated.
If it was an actual NATO operation, it would have been mandatory for all 32 nations. Not just the 13 that actually intervened.
Article 5 does not mandate every nation to participate if any one nation is attached. It is voluntary.
From the nato.int website. It reads to me that if a country refuses to come to the assistance of a country legitimately invoking the article, the country is breaching the treaty.
the issue is the exact wording is
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/collective-defence-and-article-5
“such action as it deems necessary”
assistance can mean many things, and can be very very minimal… eg purposefully ineffective sanctions would satisfy “will assist”
That’s the opposite of article 5
Depends what your definition of defence is though, doesn’t it. NATO could just be considered to be defence of peace in which case yeah you could have a mandate to intervene in certain situations and it would still be in defensive peace.
I think you’re trying to make a distinction without a purpose.
Ah, like the US.
Yes, under this ‘definition’ they could be intervening all over the world, including in Iran.
No under the NATO definition of peace. Don’t be moving the goal posts now.
lol.
Well… I think a lot of people in Iran are also happy about these strikes.
But that does not change the fact that Nato is clearly not only defensive.
I don’t get the downvotes, you are correct. The OP’s comment that NATO only intervenes defensively is clearly wrong.
Should they intervene here? No, definitely not because this is a stupid, stupid war, and that’s reason enough.
It wasn’t a NATO operation though. It just involved NATO countries. The majority of NATO countries didn’t participate.
Participation was voluntary. If it was a NATO operation, it would have been mandatory for every member.
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I think it’s my mistake for wording my comment in such a way that it sounds like I think the intervention in Yugoslavia was bad. That was not the point I was making, but I see how it could be interpreted as such.
Your mistake is disagreeing with a comment that said “NATO good”. The nature of the disagreement is irrelevant. It’s the centrist form of the tankie purity test.
They were defending those people, no?
They were also defending themselves from a building refugee crisis.
I know Serbians in the celebrity world of the country. They hate NATO for stepping in. We used to get into arguments about it.
A nation committing a genocide does tend to be aggravated by other nations interfering.
Per them. The Muslims killed Serbians. And they were armed as well. So it was only righttttttt that the Serbians killed them. /s
They hadn’t in Serbia. Not every illegal attacking war is bad. Reality is messy.
I did, they were in my class growing up in Canada, they said thanks. Have you talked to any of those people who fled that genocide?
Not my point at all. I did in no way say it was unjustified. I was just saying it was offensive and thus contradicted what the original comment said.
You know, I don’t actually know how that unfolded. Was it NATO itself, or just all the NATO members? I kind of assumed it was like Iraq.
It was NATO itself, operating under a UN mandate.
NATO also had a mission in Iraq.
In light of the other thread, you might be thinking of 1995. 1999 was a bit more like Iraq II, but more members participated since the genocide wasn’t just a thing Dick Cheney made up.
NATO these days spends a lot of time just negotiating with itself to actually set up any defences, so these stories about the UN calling up NATO and saying “please bomb here”, and then NATO just going “okay”, are kind of alien to me.
What UN mandate? They explicitly didn’t have one, because China and Russia would block it.
NATO was enforcing S/RES/1199, which demanded the end of action which affected civilians and end military action.
S/RES/1199 doesn’t authorize any kind of enforcement. It makes demands of a ceasefire, endorses observers, and threatens to “consider further action”, but doesn’t actually give any mandate for anything.
Yea… poor Yugoslavia that already faced three UN resolutions concluding their violation of basic human rights wasn’t allowed to go on with their ethnic cleansing. Shocking! /s
Correct me if I’m wrong. But the UN didn’t mandate the intervention, right? Therefore nato was in violation of international law.
But that’s besides the point. I commented under a commenting claiming Nato is purely defensive. Which it clearly isn’t.
You are wrong. NATO was under UN mandate.
No, it was not.
Pretty hard to get the UN to mandate anything substantial if there’s almost always a veto power protecting its pawns…
Now your moving the goal post. I’m not arguing about if the UN is effective or not. Just arguing that the UN didn’t sanction the bombing, unlike you implied.
If there’s ethnic cleansing going on, do you want to wait for the UN to act (in vain, because veto powers) or do you act based on the principles the UN should act on if it actually worked?
Because let’s not pretend that the UN actually decided on the substance of that matter and decided against it based on what was happening. It never decided solely due to political reasons and its architecture.
If you want to hold that against NATO, fine. Sometimes, being technically correct isn’t the thing to aspire.
The very premise that NATO, a military alliance consisting of the terrorist state and world hegemon USA and its vassals (the so-called global north, basically), does act on principles regarding human suffering in other countries is not based in material reality, but propagandised ideology.
Well… in the case we’re talking about here, the occuring violations of basic human rights were very tangible and real and not ‘propagandised ideology’.
So, when Israel…
…does ethnic cleansing under Netanyahu’s power-hungry expansionism, you’d be as justified removing Netanyahu from power. Problem is: that path necessarily leads towards conflict with the US and so far, I can’t see any US near-peers capable and willing to do so. The point still stands, though.
You are clearly right. It was an illegal attack.
At least in that circumstance there were already active hostilities that did threaten to flood NATO countries with Albanian refugees trying to escape ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and a strong possibility that the conflict would expand into NATO states.
In this war with Iran there is nothing but Israeli bloodthirst and an American President who desperately needs a distraction and something to regroup his base.
I guess? But where does nato draw the line? Does it bomb a country because it can possibly attack a nato memberstate in 30 years?
How do you get there from what was an ongoing genocide and an immanent threat? Has NATO ever bombed a country because they might attack in 30 years? There is your answer.
I mean, this would be plenty of justification for bombing texas
Well, Iran having nukes could also be seen as an imminent threat. I just don’t see why one thing would be seen as defensive and the other thing wouldn’t be.
Iran was not about to have nukes. If you listen to Netanyahu, Iran has been a week away from having nukes for decades.
If Iran did get nukes, why would that be a threat? You think Iran would be interested in putting their arsenal up against the United States? Using a nuke would be national suicide. All it would do is provide them protection from regime change wars.
Or Bosnia in 95
Nato intervened when Serbian forces committed genocide against the Bosnians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
That’s when NATO decided to intervene.
How come the one conflict where NATO was in the right and defended an ethnic Muslim minority is what people chose to die arguing against
Because it made Russia and China really nervous and that’s the propaganda they choose to spread through leftist circles.
*rightist
Well they both hate NATO now yeah.
I see your point but it was an offensive action. But in defence, I suppose.
Was Bosnia a member of NATO in 1995?
That was four years before 1999.
Sure?