The NATO Summit: Front for Democracy or Return to the Cold War?

The NATO Summit: Front for Democracy or Return to the Cold War?

To drive home this point, Biden stressed during a press conference after the summit that article 5 of the North-Atlantic Treaty remains “rock-solid” and “sacred” 72 years after its adoption. Article 5 obliges all thirty member states to consider an attack on one of the allies as an attack on all of them. Yet, NATO invoked it only once in its history, and this in support of the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The final communiqué of the present NATO summit underscored that article 5 can now also be invoked as a reaction to aggression in space and cyberspace.