--- title: 'NATO: myths and facts' url: 'https://redpill.akuadora.net/background/nato' markdown: 'https://redpill.akuadora.net/background/nato.md' date: '2026-10-22' description: 'What NATO is, why Eastern Europe joined, the “not one inch” story, Finland and Sweden, and the 5% defence spending target agreed in The Hague in 2025.' --- # NATO: myths and facts ## What NATO is NATO was founded in 1949 by twelve countries, the Netherlands among them, to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Union. Its core is **Article 5**: an attack on one member is an attack on all. It has been invoked once, by the European members and Canada in support of the United States after **11 September 2001**. NATO has never attacked Russia, and has no troops in any country that did not ask for them. ## Myth: “NATO promised Russia it would not expand” On **9 February 1990**, while negotiating German reunification, US Secretary of State James Baker told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO’s jurisdiction would not move “one inch” eastward. That conversation was about **East Germany**, at a time when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact still existed. No such promise was ever written into any treaty; the treaty Moscow signed in September 1990 let a united Germany stay in NATO. Gorbachev himself said in a 2014 interview that the topic of NATO expansion “was not discussed at all” at the time; what was discussed was not moving NATO forces into former East Germany. (In other interviews he complained that the spirit of those talks was broken; historians still argue about it. But a promise to Moscow that its former satellites could never choose their own alliance was never made.) And in **1997** Russia signed the **NATO–Russia Founding Act**, two years before Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined, and in **1994** the Budapest Memorandum, promising to respect Ukraine’s borders. ## Myth: “NATO surrounded Russia” Countries joined NATO because they asked to, and they asked because of their history with Moscow: Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, the deportations from the Baltic states. Each new member had to be accepted by every existing member. Russia’s land border with NATO before 2022 was about 6% of its total border. It was Russia’s own invasion of Ukraine that pushed **Finland** (4 April 2023) and **Sweden** (7 March 2024), neutral for generations, to join. Putin got the opposite of what he said he wanted. ## Ukraine and NATO At the Bucharest summit of **2008** NATO said Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”, but refused to give them a membership plan. Germany and France blocked it. In February 2022 there was no timetable and no member pushing for Ukraine’s entry. Russia invaded a country that was not in NATO and was not about to join. In the years since, allies have armed Ukraine, but no NATO soldier fights there. ## NATO now In December 2021 Russia demanded that NATO withdraw from every country that joined after 1997 (see [Why this is Europe’s war too](https://redpill.akuadora.net/background/why-europe)). Instead, NATO has grown and is rearming. At the summit in **The Hague** on 24–25 June 2025, allies agreed to spend **5% of GDP** on defence by 2035: 3.5% on core defence and 1.5% on related needs such as infrastructure and industry. Aid to Ukraine counts toward that target. Spain said it would not meet it. ## Sources - [NATO: Founding Act on mutual relations with Russia (1997)](https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm) - On “not one inch”: [EUvsDisinfo](https://www.euvsdisinfo.eu/report/nato-forgot-its-promise-not-to-expand-one-inch-to-the-east/), [Friends of Europe](https://www.friendsofeurope.org/insights/countering-disinformation-on-german-reunification-and-nato-enlargement/) and [BAKS (German Federal Academy for Security Policy)](https://www.baks.bund.de/en/node/1460) - [2025 The Hague NATO summit (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_The_Hague_NATO_summit); [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/25/nato-commits-to-major-defence-spending-hike-sought-by-trump) - [Finland–NATO relations (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93NATO_relations), [Sweden–NATO relations (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden%E2%80%93NATO_relations) - [2021 Russian ultimatum to NATO (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO) [← All background stories](https://redpill.akuadora.net/background) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Background](https://redpill.akuadora.net/background.md) - Previous: [Trump and the war](https://redpill.akuadora.net/background/trump.md)