{"id":6421,"date":"2026-07-07T01:17:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T01:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6421\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T01:17:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T01:17:44","slug":"nato-leaders-are-meeting-this-week-heres-what-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6421\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Leaders Are Meeting This Week. Here\u2019s What to Know."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Also under focus is <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/en\/what-we-do\/introduction-to-nato\/the-consultation-process-and-article-4\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Article 4<\/a>, which allows member countries to bring up their own security concerns for formal discussion. Estonia and Poland invoked the article after <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/29\/world\/europe\/romania-drone-strike-what-to-know.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">multiple<\/a> <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/20\/world\/europe\/poland-drones-russia-nato.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">incursions<\/a> by Russian drones and jets into NATO countries\u2019 airspace.<\/p>\n<p>Which countries are members?<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">In addition to the United States and Canada, the countries that became part of NATO in 1949 were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Since then, 19 more European states have joined: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">When Finland joined in 2023, in part a response to Russia\u2019s Ukraine invasion, it extended the alliance\u2019s commitment to collective defense to a country that shares an 830-mile border with Russia. Ukraine, which shares a nearly <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldatlas.com\/articles\/what-countries-border-ukraine.html#:~:text=Of%20the%20bordering%20countries%2C%20it,is%20Ukraine&#039;s%20shortest%20international%20border.\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">1,300-mile internationally recognized border<\/a> with Russia, has long aspired to NATO membership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Sweden is the most recent signatory to the treaty, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/03\/07\/world\/europe\/sweden-nato-neutrality.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">joining in 2024<\/a>. It brought an advanced high-tech defense industry and enhanced NATO\u2019s deterrence capabilities in the Baltic and North Seas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Also under focus is Article 4, which allows member countries to bring up their own security concerns for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4033,1680,198,1145,38,467],"class_list":["post-6421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-ankara-turkey","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-international-relations","tag-mark","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-rutte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}