Member states of NATO

Current NATO members highlighted in blue

Timeline of countries becoming NATO members. Dark blue marks countries that were already NATO members at the given time. Light blue marks new members.

NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. 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.^[1]

Of the 29 member countries, two are located in North America (Canada and the United States) and 27 are European countries while Turkey is in Eurasia. All members have militaries, except for Iceland which does not have a typical army (but does, however, have a coast guard and a small unit of civilian specialists for NATO operations). Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member nation states, and from 18 February 1952 to 6 May 1955, it added three more member nations, and a fourth on 30 May 1982. After the end of the Cold War, NATO added 13 more member nations (10 former Warsaw Pact members and three former Yugoslav republics) from 12 March 1999 to 5 June 2017.

Founding and changes in membership

NATO has added new members seven times since its founding in 1949, and since 2017 NATO has had 29 members. Twelve countries were part of the founding of NATO: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1952, Greece and Turkey became members of the Alliance, joined later by West Germany (in 1955) and Spain (in 1982). In 1990, with the reunification of Germany, NATO grew to include the former country of East Germany. Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbors were set up, including the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 1997, three former Warsaw Pact countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, were invited to join NATO. After this fourth enlargement in 1999, the Vilnius group of The Baltics and seven East European countries formed in May 2000 to cooperate and lobby for further NATO membership. Seven of these countries joined in the fifth enlargement in 2004. The Adriatic States Albania and Croatia joined in the sixth enlargement in 2009, Montenegro in 2017.

Due to the 2016–17 Turkish purges and Turkey's turn to authoritarianism some have speculated that Turkey could be expelled from NATO.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} United States President Donald Trump has also expressed interest in withdrawing from the organization during the 2016 election campaign, and only recently stated the United States would protect allies in the event that Article V is invoked. ^[10][11][12]

Member states by date of accession

Date[13]	Country	Enlargement	Notes
4 April 1949	Belgium	Founders
	Canada
	Denmark		Denmark's NATO membership includes the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
	France		France withdrew from the integrated military command in 1966 to pursue an independent defense system but returned to full participation on 3 April 2009.
	Iceland		Iceland, the sole member that does not have its own standing army, joined on the condition that it would not be expected to establish one. However, its strategic geographic position in the Atlantic made it an invaluable member. It has a Coast Guard and has recently contributed a voluntary peacekeeping force, trained in Norway for NATO.
	Italy
	Luxembourg
	Netherlands
	Norway
	Portugal
	United Kingdom
	United States
18 February 1952	Greece	First	Greece withdrew its forces from NATO's military command structure from 1974 to 1980 as a result of Greco-Turkish tensions following the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
	Turkey
6 May 1955	Germany	Second	Commonly known as West Germany when it joined; it later reunited with Saarland in 1957 and with the Berlin territories and East Germany on 3 October 1990. East Germany was a member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1956–1990.
30 May 1982	Spain	Third
12 March 1999	Czech Republic	Fourth	Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991 as part of Czechoslovakia.
	Hungary		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991.
	Poland		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1990.
29 March 2004	Bulgaria	Fifth	Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991.
	Estonia		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991 as part of the Soviet Union.
	Latvia		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991 as part of the Soviet Union.
	Lithuania		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1990 as part of the Soviet Union.
	Romania		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991.
	Slovakia		Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1991 as part of Czechoslovakia.
	Slovenia		Previously part of Yugoslavia 1945–1991 (Non-aligned)
1 April 2009	Albania	Sixth	Member of the rival Warsaw Pact 1955–1968.
	Croatia		Previously part of Yugoslavia 1945–1991 (Non-aligned)
5 June 2017	Montenegro	Seventh	Previously part of Yugoslavia 1945–2006 (Non-aligned)

Military personnel

Country	Active personnel	Reserve personnel	Total
Albania	8,500	5,000	13,500
Belgium	24,500	100,500	125,000
Bulgaria	35,000	302,500	337,500
Canada	68,000	27,000	95,000
Croatia	18,000	180,000	198,000
Czech Republic	21,057	2,359	23,416
Denmark	20,003	63,000	83,003
Estonia	6,425	60,000	63,209
France	222,215	100,000	322,215
Germany	180,676	145,000	325,676
Greece	180,000	280,000	460,000
Hungary	29,700	8400	38,100
Iceland	210	170	380
Italy	180,000	41,867	220,867
Latvia	6,000	11,000	17,000
Lithuania	15,839	4,550	20,389
Luxembourg	1,057	278	1,335
Montenegro	1,950	400	2,350
Netherlands	47,660	57,200	104,860
Norway	26,200	56,200	82,400
Poland	120,000	515,000	635,000
Portugal	44,900	210,930	255,830
Romania	73,350	79,900	153,250
Slovakia	16,000		16,000
Slovenia	7,300	1,500	8,801
Spain	123,000	16,200	139,200
Turkey	620,473	429,000	1,041,900
United Kingdom	205,851	181,720	387,571
United States	1,369,532	850,880	2,220,412
NATO	3,673,000	3,745,000	7,420,000

Military expenditures

Country	Population (2016 est.)	GDP (nominal) (2015, US$ millions)	Military expenditures (2015, US$ millions)	Military expenditures (2016, % of GDP)[14]	Defence expenditures, (2014, US$ per capita)	Deployable military (2016)[14]
Albania	3,038,594	11,543	155	1.21	42.2	7,000
Belgium	11,409,077	454,687	4,953	0.85	468	29,000
Bulgaria	7,144,653	48,957	797	1.35	116	31,000
Canada	35,362,905	1,552,386	17,210	0.99	492	65,000
Croatia	4,313,707	48,850	904	1.23	204	15,000
Czech Republic	10,644,842	181,858	2,099	1.04	189	22,000
Denmark	5,593,785	294,951	4,130	1.14	796	16,000
Estonia	1,258,545	22,704	546	2.16	392	6,000
France	66,836,154	2,421,560	49,747	1.78	964	207,000b
Germany	80,722,792	3,413,483	47,046	1.19	562	180,000
Greece	10,773,253	195,320	6,104	2.38	479	106,000
Hungary	9,874,784	120,636	1,225	1.01	118	18,000
Iceland	335,878	16,718	4.5	a	14.2	0a
Italy	62,007,540	1,815,757	28,460	1.11	506	182,000
Latvia	1,965,686	27,048	341	1.45	150	5,000
Lithuania	2,854,235	41,267	566	1.49	126	13,000
Luxembourg	582,291	57,423	362	0.44	594	900
Montenegro	623,000	3,900	43	1.2	60	1950
Netherlands	17,016,967	738,419	10,476	1.17	600	41,000
Norway	5,265,158	389,482	7,377	1.54	1,328	20,000
Poland	38,523,261	474,893	12,603	2	275	103,000
Portugal	10,833,816	199,077	4,380	1.38	396	31,000
Romania	21,599,736	177,315	2,980	1.48	118	70,000
Slovakia	5,445,802	86,629	1,164	1.16	180	13,000
Slovenia	1,978,029	42,768	489	0.94	233	7,000
Spain	48,563,476	1,199,715	16,929	0.91	270	121,000
Turkey	80,274,604	733,642	17,669	1.56	298	411,000
United Kingdom	64,430,428	2,849,345	59,730	2.21	952	161,000
United States	323,995,528	16,348,875	595,472	3.61	1,891	1,305,000
NATO	932,645,526	36,211,501	904,913	2.9	934	3,515,000

Population data from CIA World Factbook
GDP data from IMF^[15]
Expenditure data (except Iceland) from SIPRI Military Expenditure Database,^[16] Icelandic data (2013) from Statistics Iceland^[17]
Military personnel data from NATO^[18]
a Iceland has no armed forces.
^b 2015 data.

References