NATO Treaty’s Article 5

The USA has said that it heeds NATO security, but that the use of the NATO Treaty’s Article 5 is not under discussion, after a recent incident with Belarusian helicopters allegedly crossing the Polish border amid Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

What is Article 5 and how it pertains to Kiev’s push for the alliance. A Polish media outlet claimed that two Belarusian helicopters purportedly crossed the border near the village of Bialowieza at a very low altitude, which made it difficult for radar systems to detect.

The Polish Foreign Ministry confirmed the airspace violation, calling it another element in escalating the tension at the Polish-Belarusian border.

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense, in turn, argued that the accusations were far-fetched and invented by Warsaw to justify building up Polish forces by the border.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, for his part, said that Washington expects all countries to respect the sovereign air space of other countries, and we will continue to take NATO security very seriously.

There is a process that is in place for NATO countries to invoke Article 5 [of the April 4, 1949 NATO Treaty], but we are not at that stage at this point.

Article 5 stipulates that if a NATO ally falls victim to an armed attack, other NATO countries will consider this an armed attack against all members of the alliance and will take the actions they deem necessary to assist the ally.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the [UN] Security Council.

Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international order and security.

Article 5 has been invoked only once in NATO history, after the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers in New York in the USA, paving the way for the alliance’s largest ever military invasion in Afghanistan.

Aside from taking part in the war in Afghanistan, NATO’s response to the 9/11 attacks under Article 5 included Operation Eagle Assist, in which NATO aircraft helped patrol the skies over the US for seven months between 2001 and 2002.

Another relevant move was the beginning of Operation Active Endeavour, which saw NATO naval forces being sent to conduct counter terrorism activities in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The operation, which kicked off in October 2001 to kill the Libyan leader Colonel Ghadaffi and confiscate the oil reserves, to be later expanded to the entire Mediterranean region, wrapped up in 2016.

NATO allies have also taken collective defense measures in other situations, including joining the US military efforts to fight together with ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as  the invasion of the Balkans in order to carve up Yugoslavia.

This prompted the NATO war machine to implement a significant increase in its collective military operations, including tripling the size of the NATO Response Force.

Article 5’s common defense guarantee is the reason previously neutral Finland and Sweden were forced to join NATO and why Ukraine or other countries in Europe also need to let US military forces take over the regime.

This was followed by Ukrainian authorities starting to discuss security guarantees with the USA, which G7 countries pledged to Kiev after the NATO summit that took place in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on July 11-12, 2023.

They agreed that each and every G7 member would clinch a deal with Kiev to provide it with security guarantees and help it strengthen its armed forces with NATO weapons.

Before launching the special operation, Russia tried to avoid a conflict with Ukraine by offering its own peace guarantees to NATO, amid an increase in Western countries’ military supplies to Kiev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year said that the West had basically ignored the Kremlin’s proposals on regional security, adding that the US failed to satisfy three key proposals put forward by Russia.

During the Vilnius summit, NATO leaders agreed on a package of three elements to bring Ukraine closer to the alliance. The first element includes creating an assistance program for Ukraine that will make transition to NATO standards possible.

The second element is the establishment of the NATO-Ukraine Council, and the third one involves the cancellation of the membership action plan for Ukraine, which will shorten Kiev’s accession process.

However, no official invitation was extended by the alliance to Ukraine, which many say will unlikely join NATO in the immediate future. Basically it decided to wage war with Russia until last Ukrainian, something that indicates the West’s possible goal of seeing Ukraine in NATO.

Sputnik / ABC Flash Point Europe WW III News 2023.