BRUSSELS, 4 Apr: NATO marked on Thursday 75 years of collective defense across Europe and North America, with its top diplomats vowing to stay the course in Ukraine as better-armed Russian troops assert control on the battlefield.
\nThe anniversary comes as the now-32-nation alliance weighs a plan to provide more predictable longer-term military support to Ukraine. Plagued by ammunition shortages, Ukraine this week lowered the military conscription age from 27 to 25 in an effort to replenish its depleted ranks and appealed for additional aid defenses to counter increasing Russian ballistic missile attacks.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to spoil the birthday party for NATO, but I felt compelled to deliver a sobering message on behalf of Ukrainians about the state of Russian air attacks on my country, destroying our energy system, our economy, killing civilians,\u201d said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who attended a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council.
\nKuleba thanked the allies for agreeing to begin identifying Patriot missile battery stocks that could be sent to Ukraine. The Patriot \u201cis the only system that effectively intercepts ballistic missiles,\u201d he said.
\nU.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking before meeting with Kuleba, said that \u201csupport for Ukraine, the determination of every country represented here at NATO, remains rock solid.\u201d
\n\u201cWe will do everything we can, allies will do everything that they can, to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to continue to deal with Russia\u2019s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, aggression that is getting worse with every passing day,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe fight that Ukraine has on its hands is not only Ukraine\u2019s fight, it\u2019s everyone\u2019s fight because the aggression being committed by Russia is not only an aggression against Ukraine and its people, it\u2019s an aggression against the very principles that lie at the heart of the international system,\u201d Blinken said.
\nThe Ukraine meeting, which ran significantly beyond its scheduled time, was held after a ceremony to mark the day NATO\u2019s founding treaty was signed: April 4, 1949, in Washington. A bigger celebration is planned when NATO leaders meet in Washington from July 9 to 11.
\nHundreds of staffers filled the vast air terminal-like space at the center of NATO\u2019s sprawling Brussels headquarters, while scores of others looked down from glassed walkways and stairways as Belgian and Dutch military bands played the NATO Hymn, the original Washington Treaty laid before them.
\n\u201cI like the Washington Treaty. Not least because it is very short,\u201d NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said with a smile. \u201cJust 14 paragraphs over a few pages. Never has a single document with so few words meant so much to so many people. So much security. So much prosperity, and so much peace.\u201d
\nOutside Brussels on Wednesday evening, Blinken had paid tribute \u201cto the millions of soldiers, sailors, and aviators whose courage and willingness to put their lives on the line have given weight to our sacred commitment to defend one another.\u201d
\nBlinken said that even as foreign ministers mark more than seven decades of peace, \u201cthat security \u2013 together with the Alliance\u2019s core principles of democracy, liberty, and the rule of law \u2013 is once again being threatened by those who believe that might makes right\u2026 and who seek to redraw borders by force.\u201d
\nSweden\u2019s foreign minister, Tobias Billstr\u00f6m, was taking part in the first ministerial-level meeting since his country became NATO\u2019s 32nd ally last month. Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drove Sweden and Finland into NATO\u2019s arms.
\n\u201cNATO represents the freedom to choose,\u201d Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said, reflecting on the way the Nordic neighbors recently joined. \u201cDemocratic nations, free people chose to join. Unlike how Russia expands its by aggression or by illegal annexation.\u201d AP<\/p>\n
President Vladimir Putin said he launched the war, in part at least, because NATO was expanding closer to Russia\u2019s borders.
\nThe alliance\u2019s ranks have almost tripled from its 12 founding members, but Finland and Sweden joined in record time to shelter under NATO\u2019s collective security guarantee.
\nThat promise \u2014 Article 5 of the Washington Treaty \u2014 stipulates that an attack on any one of their number must be met with a united response. It\u2019s only ever been used once, after the Al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil in 2001.
\nAmong the more recent successes as it grew from the Cold War and after the Berlin Wall collapsed, NATO would count its 1999 air campaign against former Yugoslavia to end a bloody crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians and its effort to avert near civil war in Macedonia in 2001.
\nAt the other end of the scale lies the operation in Afghanistan. NATO took command of the security effort in 2003 and it became the longest, costliest and deadliest in alliance history. It was marked by a chaotic retreat in August 2021, many of the successes over almost two decades abandoned.
\nToday, Ukraine also wants a seat at NATO\u2019s table, but the alliance works on unanimity and there is no consensus on whether it should join. Most allies oppose membership while war rages on anyway. For now, NATO promises only that its door is open for Ukraine in the future.
\nNATO allies cannot agree on whether to arm Ukraine either. As an organization, the alliance only provides non-lethal support like transport vehicles, fuel, combat rations, medical supplies and demining equipment. However, many members provide arms and ammunition bilaterally or in groups.
\nThe bulk of NATO\u2019s efforts since Russian troops began massing for the invasion has focused on reinforcing its own borders near Russia and Ukraine to dissuade Putin from targeting any of the allies next.
\nArticle 5 was given perhaps its toughest test during Donald Trump\u2019s term as president of the United States \u2013 by far NATO\u2019s most powerful member country. Trump suggested the U.S. might not defend any NATO ally that failed to boost their own defense spending to at least 2% of gross domestic product, as all had agreed to do in 2014.
\nTrump has repeated the threat during election campaigning this year. NATO predicts that 18 of its 32 members will reach that target this year, up from only 3 a decade ago. AP<\/p>\n
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