The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. Three NATO members are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and are officially nuclear-weapon states: the United States, France and the United Kingdom. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons. Belgium is one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the global total. Members' defence spending is supposed to amount to 2% of GDP. - Source: Wikipedia
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