Educate. Empower. Choose.

If you came here because you need to explain NATO to a student, a parent, or a neighbor — who pays, whose airspace, whose war, and what the Treaty actually says — you are in the right place. Your children will live under the same alliance you live under. The question is whether they will know the papers before someone else names them. The National American Citizen Association educates citizens so they can read the record. Free people cannot choose what they have not been taught. Here is the North Atlantic Treaty, the Baker–Gorbachev memos, the enlargement chronology, who pays, and what named governments did when the United States asked for airspace.

The companion pieces are already in this series: Why Israel Matters is who Israel is, in Truman’s recognition and in Hamas’s own 1988 Covenant. What We Inherited is the American tree those papers sit on. This one is the alliance that is supposed to defend that inheritance — and the documents that show how it has been used.

What the Treaty says

NATO is not a mood. It is a treaty signed in Washington on April 4, 1949, by twelve countries, including the United States. It entered into force on August 24, 1949. It has no expiration date.

The heart of it is Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, 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.

Source: The North Atlantic Treaty, April 4, 1949

Read that twice. An attack on one is an attack on all — in Europe or North America. Each ally then takes “such action as it deems necessary.” That is a real obligation. It is not a blank check for every war, every theater, or every partner outside the North Atlantic area. Israel is not a NATO member. An Iran–Israel fight is not, by itself, an Article 5 event — unless a NATO member’s territory, forces, vessels, or aircraft are attacked as Article 6 defines them.

Article 6, as revised when Greece and Turkey acceded, includes “the territory of Turkey.” That matters later.

The Treaty also says how long it lasts. It does not sunset. Article 12 is a review clause, not a death date:

After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter, the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, consult together for the purpose of reviewing the Treaty…

Article 13 is withdrawal, not expiry:

After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America…

Source: same official text. Yale Avalon carries the 1949 English: avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nato.asp

Ten-year review. Twenty-year withdrawal, with one year’s notice. No seven-year clock. No automatic end. The alliance is still in force because the parties kept it, not because a calendar forgot to kill it.

Article 10 is the open door: the Parties may, “by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.” Every new member requires every existing member’s consent. That is why one capital can delay another country’s accession.

Article 5 has been invoked once: after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in defense of the United States.

After the Wall: what was said, what was signed

President Reagan left office on January 20, 1989. The Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989, under President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan did not sign a treaty forbidding NATO to enlarge. No such signed treaty covering Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states, or the rest of Central and Eastern Europe exists.

What exists is a paper trail. Read it.

On February 9, 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met Gorbachev in Moscow. In the Soviet record of that conversation, Baker said the Americans understood that:

not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.

He put it as a question: would Gorbachev prefer a united Germany outside NATO, or a united Germany tied to NATO “with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary.” Gorbachev answered that “a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable.” Baker: “We agree with that.”

Sources: National Security Archive briefing, “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard” (December 12, 2017); Document 6, Record of conversation, February 9, 1990 (Gorbachev Foundation). Baker used the “not one inch eastward” formula three times in that meeting.

That was a memorandum of conversation. It was not a signed treaty of non-enlargement.

The signed treaty of that year is different, and narrower. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany — the Two-Plus-Four Treaty — was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990, by the two German states and the four occupying powers. It gave the former territory of the German Democratic Republic a special military status: after Soviet troops left, German forces assigned to NATO could be stationed there, but foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons would not. That is a ratified settlement about East German soil. It is not a clause that names Poland, Hungary, Estonia, or Ukraine.

The National Security Archive argues that the Baker–Genscher–Kohl conversations of 1990 were not limited to the GDR — that Gorbachev was “led to believe” NATO would not move toward Soviet borders. Mark Kramer and others have called a general no-enlargement pledge a “myth.” The documents are public. The reader can hold both facts at once: verbal assurances were given in 1990; the only signed limit was about former East Germany; later governments of the Central European states asked to join, and NATO’s Article 10 allowed it by unanimous consent.

Then the alliance moved.

NATO’s own chronology (member countries; enlargement and Article 10):

  • March 12, 1999 — Czechia, Hungary, Poland. First former Warsaw Pact members.
  • March 29, 2004 — Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. Largest round. The three Baltic states are former Soviet republics.
  • April 1, 2009 — Albania, Croatia.
  • June 5, 2017 — Montenegro.
  • March 27, 2020 — North Macedonia.
  • April 4, 2023 — Finland.
  • March 7, 2024 — Sweden. NATO’s 32nd member.

That is the “move.” It is not a rumor. It is on nato.int. Whether those accessions broke a deal depends on whether the reader treats Baker’s February 9 formula as a political obligation or as talk that was never written into a treaty. This series does not substitute a slogan for that choice.

Who pays

There are two different piles of money. Mixing them is how people get fooled.

1. NATO’s common-funded budgets — headquarters, the command structure, shared infrastructure. Small. NATO says around EUR 4.6 billion for 2025 and up to EUR 5.3 billion for 2026, about 0.3 percent of total Allied defence spending. Shares are set by a Gross National Income formula. From January 1, 2026, through December 31, 2027, the official cost shares include:

Ally Common-budget share
United States 14.9039%
Germany 14.9039%
United Kingdom 10.3277%
France 10.1023%
Italy 7.9925%
Türkiye 6.3010%
Spain 5.7782%
Canada 6.5845%
Poland 3.3813%

Source: Funding NATO, updated April 8, 2026. The United States and Germany pay the same slice of this small common pot.

2. National defence spending — what each country actually spends on its own forces, which is what Article 3 requires (“continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid”). This is the real burden.

NATO’s 2006 defence-minister guideline, restated at Wales in 2014 and made “enduring” at Vilnius in 2023, was 2 percent of GDP. At The Hague Summit in June 2025, Allies committed to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 (at least 3.5 percent on core defence, up to 1.5 percent on related security spending).

Source: The Hague Summit Declaration; Funding NATO.

In 2014, three Allies met 2 percent. In 2025, NATO reports that all Allies met or exceeded it for the first time. European Allies and Canada spent more than USD 574 billion (2021 prices) in 2025, a 20 percent real increase over 2024. Combined Allied expenditure on core defence was more than USD 1.4 trillion. The United States accounted for 52 percent of Allies’ combined GDP and 60 percent of combined nominal defence expenditure. NATO itself notes that the Alliance relies on the United States for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defence; and airborne electromagnetic warfare — and that U.S. spending also covers commitments outside the Euro-Atlantic area.

Sources: Secretary General’s Annual Report 2025; NATO news, March 26, 2026; Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2025).

So: the loudest argument about “who pays NATO” is often about a few billion euros in Brussels. The quieter fact is that American national defence spending is still most of the alliance’s actual military power. Front-line states that live next to Russia have raised their own GDP shares. Others met 2 percent late, and some of those same governments later drew a line at American overflight. The Treaty does not require every ally to join every American war. It does require each to maintain the capacity to resist armed attack, and to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. A citizen can ask who spends, who hosts, and who shows up — without pretending the common budget is the whole story.

Turkey: the ally in the Treaty, the government, the people

Turkey (Türkiye) joined NATO on February 18, 1952, with Greece. Article 6 of the Treaty was revised to cover Turkish territory. In December 1954 the Turkish General Staff and the U.S. Air Force agreed to joint use of what became Incirlik Air Base. That is a Cold War fact, still on the map.

Sources: NATO member countries, 1952 accession; Congressional Research Service, Turkey–U.S. Relations: Timeline.

Turkish people are not the enemy. They are a nation, and for years they hosted Israeli families on holiday.

Until 2009, Turkey was the country most visited by Israelis: more than half a million visits in 2008. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics recorded 79,526 Israeli visits in 2012, an 85 percent drop from 2008. Turkish tourism figures put the 2008 peak at about 558,000, a collapse after 2010, then a recovery: about 440,000 Israeli entries in 2018. The Bank of Israel, citing the Turkish Statistical Institute, reports about 824,000 Israeli tourist visits to Türkiye in 2022 — and about 81,000 in 2024, a contraction of roughly 90 percent from 2022.

Sources: Israel CBS, Tourism in Israel (2008 / 2012); Haaretz summary of Turkish Tourism Ministry figures, January 22, 2019; Bank of Israel, impact of the Turkish embargo, 2024 annual report box.

People vacationed. Governments broke.

The first rupture that the record names is May 31, 2010: Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged ship in a flotilla bound for Gaza. Nine Turkish citizens were killed. Turkey downgraded ties and recalled its ambassador. A 2016 compensation-and-normalization deal restored ambassadors for a time. Israel’s embassy in Ankara says that after October 7, 2023, “a diplomatic crisis started between the 2 states and the Israeli embassy in Ankara is closed these days.”

Sources: CRS timeline; Israel MFA, Bilateral relations — Ankara.

On October 25, 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told AK Party lawmakers:

Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.

He cancelled a planned visit to Israel. Reuters recorded the speech. Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected it. Turkey, unlike many of its NATO allies, does not designate Hamas a terrorist organization.

Source: Reuters, October 25, 2023.

In April 2024 Türkiye announced an export ban on 54 goods to Israel; from early May 2024 it banned all trade. The Bank of Israel records that official freeze. Tourism had already collapsed. That is the government, not the families who used to fly to Antalya.

The same government bought a Russian weapons system that Washington said endangered NATO technology. Turkey received the S-400 from Russia’s Rosoboronexport beginning in July 2019. The United States removed Turkey from the F-35 program. On December 14, 2020, the State Department imposed CAATSA Section 231 sanctions on Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries:

The United States made clear to Turkey at the highest levels and on numerous occasions that its purchase of the S-400 system would endanger the security of U.S. military technology and personnel and provide substantial funds to Russia’s defense sector…

Source: U.S. Department of State, “The United States Sanctions Turkey Under CAATSA 231,” December 14, 2020.

When Finland and Sweden asked to join NATO after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, every ally had to agree. Turkey raised objections in May 2022 over groups it deems terrorists. It ratified Finland in April 2023 and held Sweden until Turkey’s parliament voted 287–55 on January 23, 2024 — about twenty months. Hungary delayed as well. Sweden deposited its instrument of accession on March 7, 2024.

Sources: Reuters, January 23, 2024; NATO, Sweden accession.

A NATO member that sits on Incirlik, that is covered by Article 5, that bought Russian air defense, that delayed Sweden, and whose government called Hamas “mujahideen” after October 7, is still an ally in the Treaty. The Turkish people who filled Istanbul hotels are not that government. A citizen can hold the Treaty in one hand and this record in the other.

Airspace, Iran, and “whose war”

The Iranian people are not the enemy. The 1979 regime is a rival law. That distinction is already in What We Inherited and on Fight Extremism. The question here is narrower: when Israel and the United States fought Iran, who opened airspace, and who closed it.

April 13–14, 2024. Iran launched drones and missiles at Israel. The shortest path is across Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Jordan closed airspace, then said it intercepted objects that entered Jordanian airspace “to ensure the safety of citizens.” The United States, the United Kingdom, and France were involved in the wider intercept. That is not a story of Jordan refusing help. It is a story of a neighbor shooting down incoming munitions over its own sky.

Sources: BBC, “What was in wave of Iranian attacks,” April 2024; Al Jazeera, airspace reopenings, April 14, 2024.

Late February–March 2026. The United States and Israel conducted a campaign against Iran that Spanish officials named Operation Epic Fury. This time a NATO ally closed its own airspace to American aircraft in that fight.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in Congress:

We have denied the United States the use of the Rota and Morón bases for this illegal war. All flight plans involving operations in Iran have been rejected. All of them, including those for refueling aircraft.

Defence Minister Margarita Robles:

We will not authorise the use of Morón and Rota [military bases] for any acts related to the war in Iran.

Sánchez: “We are a sovereign country that does not wish to take part in illegal wars.” He summed up the government’s position as “no to war.” Spain is a NATO member. It pays its common-budget share (5.7782 percent in 2026–27). It is covered by Article 5. It also hosts U.S. destroyers at Rota whose Aegis systems, El País reported, later intercepted ballistic missiles that had violated the airspace of Turkey — a NATO ally.

Sources: El País English, March 30, 2026; BBC, March 30, 2026.

No official document was found that a NATO member “refused the United States airspace over Iran.” Iranian airspace is Iran’s. What the named record shows is a NATO government refusing Spanish airspace and Spanish bases for a U.S.–Israel campaign against Iran, while remaining under the American security umbrella against Russia. The United Kingdom, by contrast, allowed use of RAF Fairford for what Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as defensive missions. Different capitals, different choices. Read the quotes. Decide who showed up.

What to do with this

Educate. Read the North Atlantic Treaty — Article 5, Article 6, Article 10, Article 12, Article 13. Read Baker’s February 9, 1990, conversation and the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of September 12, 1990. Read NATO’s own enlargement dates and the 2025–2026 spending tables. Original documents, not a feed.

Empower. A citizen who can tell a common budget from a defence budget, a verbal assurance from a signed treaty, and a people from a government cannot be bullied by a chant — or by a press conference.

Choose. Choose to know what Article 5 covers and what it does not. Choose to ask who pays the 60 percent and who closes airspace. Choose the ally who shows up, and tell a Turkish family from an S-400 purchase, an Iranian people from a regime.

NATO is a treaty of collective defence among sovereign states. It has no seven-year fuse. It has a review clause, a withdrawal clause, an open door, and a bill. The United States is still most of the military mass. After the Wall, governments in Washington and Brussels enlarged the map. After October 7, a NATO government in Ankara named Hamas “mujahideen.” In 2026 a NATO government in Madrid named an American campaign an “illegal war” and shut the sky. The papers are linked above. The next generation will live with whatever this generation did not bother to read.

Sources

  1. The North Atlantic Treaty, April 4, 1949 (in force August 24, 1949). NATO official text. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm
  2. Same treaty, Yale Avalon. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nato.asp
  3. NATO member countries and enlargement rounds. https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/organization/nato-member-countries
  4. Enlargement and Article 10. https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/partnerships-and-cooperation/enlargement-and-article-10
  5. National Security Archive, “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard,” December 12, 2017. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
  6. Record of conversation, Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker, February 9, 1990 (Document 6). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-conversation-between
  7. Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Two-Plus-Four), September 12, 1990. U.S. Senate Treaty Document 101-20. https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/101st-congress/20
  8. Funding NATO (common-funded cost shares 2026–2027; 2% and 5% guidelines). Updated April 8, 2026. https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
  9. The Hague Summit Declaration, June 25, 2025. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_236705.htm
  10. Secretary General’s Annual Report 2025 (U.S. 60% of nominal defence expenditure; all Allies at 2%). https://www.nato.int/content/dam/nato/webready/documents/publications-and-reports/annual-reports/sgar25-en.pdf
  11. NATO news, March 26, 2026, Annual Report presentation. https://www.nato.int/en/news-and-events/articles/news/2026/03/26/nato-secretary-generals-annual-report-shows-significant-increase-in-defence-investment-from-europe-and-canada
  12. Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2025). https://www.nato.int/content/dam/nato/webready/documents/finance/def-exp-2025-en.pdf
  13. Congressional Research Service, Turkey (Türkiye)–U.S. Relations: Timeline (1952 accession; Incirlik 1954; Mavi Marmara; 2024 trade suspension). https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10487
  14. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Tourism in Israel (Israeli visits to Turkey through 2012). https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/Statistical/touris2014e.pdf
  15. Bank of Israel, impact of the Turkish embargo (824,000 Israeli visits in 2022; 81,000 in 2024; May 2024 trade ban). https://www.boi.org.il/en/communication-and-publications/press-releases/box-from-the-forthcoming-bank-of-israel-annual-report-for-2024-the-impact-of-the-turkish-embargo-on-israels-economy
  16. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bilateral relations — Embassy of Israel, Ankara. https://embassies.gov.il/ankara/en/the-embassy/bilateral-relations
  17. Reuters, Erdoğan on Hamas, October 25, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkeys-erdogan-says-hamas-is-not-terrorist-organisation-2023-10-25/
  18. U.S. Department of State, CAATSA Section 231 sanctions on Turkey for the S-400, December 14, 2020. https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-united-states-sanctions-turkey-under-caatsa-231/
  19. Reuters, Turkey’s parliament ratifies Sweden’s NATO accession, January 23, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-set-approve-swedens-nato-membership-bid-after-long-delay-2024-01-23/
  20. BBC, April 2024 Iranian strikes on Israel and intercepts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68811273
  21. El País English, Spain closes airspace to aircraft in the Iran war, March 30, 2026. https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-03-30/spain-closes-airspace-to-aircraft-involved-in-iran-war-but-us-bases-are-being-used-in-other-ways.html
  22. BBC, Spain closes airspace to U.S. aircraft involved in Iran war, March 30, 2026. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy368j1e3lo
  23. National American Citizen Association, Why Israel Matters. https://nacagroup.org/israel-safeguarding-rights/
  24. National American Citizen Association, What We Inherited. https://nacagroup.org/what-we-inherited/

Civic education and political commentary. Quotations are from the public documents linked above.