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 28 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 28 member countries, two are located in North America (Canada and the United States) and 25 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 1 April 2009 it added 16 more member nations.

Original and joining members

NATO has added new members six times since its founding in 1949, and since 2009 NATO has had 28 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. Albania and Croatia joined in the sixth enlargement in 2009.

Member states by date of accession

Date[2]	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 1955–1991 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)

Military personnel

Country	Active personnel	Reserve personnel	Total
Albania	14,500	5,000	19,500
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	15,000	63,000	89,000
Estonia	3,209	60,000	63,209
France	222,215	100,000	322,215
Germany	180,676	145,000	325,676
Greece	109,070	280,000	389,070
Hungary	19,000		19,000
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
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	3,585,000	3,745,000	7,330,000

Military expenditures

Country	Population (2014)	GDP (nominal) (2014, US$ millions)	Military expenditures (2014, US$ millions)	Military expenditures (2014, % of GDP)	Defence expenditures, (2014, US$ per capita)	Deployable military (2013)
Albania	3,020,209	13,262	135	1.0	42.2	8,000
Belgium	10,449,361	534,672	5,190	1.0	468	31,000
Bulgaria	6,924,716	55,837	837	1.6	116	26,000
Canada	34,834,841	1,788,717	17,452	1.0	492	70,000
Croatia	4,470,534	57,159	875	1.5	204	16,000
Czech Republic	10,627,448	205,658	2,023	1.0	189	21,000
Denmark	5,569,077	340,806	4,457	1.3	796	19,000
Estonia	1,257,921	25,953	509	2.0	392	6,000
France	66,259,012	2,846,889	62,289	2.2	964	213,000
Germany	80,996,685	3,859,547	46,455	1.2	562	184,000
Greece	10,775,557	238,023	5,318	2.2	479	109,000
Hungary	9,919,128	137,104	1,164	0.9	118	18,000
Iceland	317,351	16,693	4.5	0.03	14.2	0^a
Italy	61,680,122	2,147,952	30,909	1.5	506	186,000
Latvia	2,165,165	31,970	299	1.3	150	5,000
Lithuania	3,505,738	48,232	377	0.8	126	9,000
Luxembourg	520,672	62,395	297	0.5	594	900
Netherlands	16,877,351	866,354	10,086	1.2	600	43,000
Norway	5,147,792	500,244	6,773	1.4	1,328	21,000
Poland	38,346,279	546,644	10,499	1.9	275	100,000
Portugal	10,813,834	230,012	4,201	1.9	396	35,000
Romania	21,729,871	199,950	2,543	1.3	118	66,000
Slovakia	5,443,583	99,971	988	1.0	180	15,000
Slovenia	1,988,292	49,506	490	1.0	233	7,000
Spain	47,737,941	1,406,855	12,732	0.9	270	122,000
Turkey	81,619,392	806,108	22,618	2.2	298	494,000
United Kingdom	64,105,700	2,945,146	60,482	2.2	952	174,000
United States	318,892,103	17,418,925	609,914	3.5	1,891	1,370,000
NATO	906,002,051	37,480,584	919,917	2.5	934	3,515,000
Population data from CIA World Factbook GDP data from IMF[3] Expenditure data (except Iceland) from SIPRI Military Expenditure Database,[4] Icelandic data (2013) from Statistics Iceland[5] Military personnel data from NATO[6] ^a Iceland has no armed forces.

References

1. "The North Atlantic Treaty". North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1949-04-04. Retrieved 2008-06-16.
2. "North Atlantic Treaty" (PDF). United States Department of State. 2009-04-01. Retrieved 2015-09-02.
3. "World Economic Outlook Database April 2015". International Monetary Fund. International Monetary Fund. April 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
4. "SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2015" (XLS). Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
5. "Central government total expenditure by function 1998-2013". Statistics Iceland. Statistics Iceland. 2014-09-23. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
6. "Financial and Economic Data Relating to NATO Defence" (PDF). NATO. NATO. 24 February 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2015.