10 things you need to know about NATO(Significance of NATO)

Collective defence: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 and is a group
of 29 countries from Europe and North America that exists to protect the people and territory of its
members. The Alliance is founded on the principle of collective defence, meaning that if one NATO Ally
is attacked, then all NATO Allies are attacked. For example, when terrorists attacked the United States
on 9/11 2001, all NATO Allies stood with America as though they had also been attacked.

Since 2014, NATO has implemented the biggest increase in its collective defence since the Cold War.
For instance, we have now deployed four multinational battlegroups to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and
Poland. Their purpose is not to provoke a conflict, but to prevent one.

Managing crises around the world: Promoting stability in our neighbourhood and protecting our
people at home can sometimes mean taking action further afield. In the 1990s, NATO stopped further
bloodshed from occurring in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since 2003, NATO has helped to ensure that
Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for international terrorist groups. NATO has also helped to prevent
piracy off the Horn of Africa and, since 2016, has helped address the refugee and migrant crisis in
Europe.

Fighting Terrorism: NATO plays an important role in fighting terrorism, contributing more than 13,000
NATO troops to train local forces in Afghanistan. NATO is also a full member of the Global Coalition to
Defeat ISIS, and our AWACS surveillance aircraft continue to support the Coalition. NATO is also training
Iraqi forces to better fight ISIS, and our new Intelligence Division helps us to anticipate and respond to
threats. In Naples, NATO has set up a ‘Hub for the South’ to help Allies tackle the threat of terrorism.

Working with our partners: Because threats like terrorism, piracy and cyber warfare know no borders,
NATO is committed to cooperation with its global partners. That’s why we work with over 40 partner
countries around the world, as well as organisations such as the United Nations, the European Union,
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the African Union, to spread
stability and security.

Troops and Equipment: Whenever NATO carries out a mission, individual Allies commit troops and
equipment to be placed under a unified NATO command. These become known as “NATO forces.” The
only military equipment that NATO owns is a fleet of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control)
surveillance aircraft. NATO is also developing a capability for Global Hawk surveillance drones.
 NATO's Command Structure: With so many countries working together, having a clear chain of
command is vital. Military and civilian personnel from all member states work together every day within
NATO’s ‘Command Structure.’ This includes two top-level Strategic Commands: Allied Command
Operations, based in Mons, Belgium; and Allied Command Transformation, based in Norfolk in the
United States. To remain fit for purpose, the NATO Command Structure is being modernised to enable
us to move forces more quickly across Europe and to keep sea lines of communication across the
Atlantic free and open.

NATO funding: Every NATO country contributes to the costs of running the Alliance. By far the Allies’
biggest contribution comes in the form of taking part in NATO-led missions and operations. For example,
one country might provide fighter jets, while another provides ships, equipment or troops. NATO Allies
also provide direct funding to NATO to cover the costs of NATO staff and facilities, its Command
Structure and its jointly-owned equipment, like its AWACS aircraft.

Defence Spending: At the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO Allies pledged to invest more and better in
defence – to stop the cuts, move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence by 2024, and to spend 20% of
that on major equipment. We are making progress. Over the last three years, European Allies and
Canada have spent almost 46 billion US dollars more on defence.

The "Open Door" Policy: The Open Door Policy is a founding principle of NATO and means that any
country in the Euro-Atlantic area is free to join NATO if it is prepared to meet the standards and
obligations of membership, contributes to the security of the Alliance, and shares NATO’s values of
democracy, reform, and the rule of law. Since 1949, NATO’s membership has grown from 12 to 29
countries. In 2017 we welcomed Montenegro as our 29th member of the NATO Alliance.

Cyber Defence: Cyber-attacks are becoming more common, sophisticated and damaging, making
cyber defence a top priority for NATO. In fact, NATO now recognises cyberspace as an ‘operational
domain’ – just as land, sea or air. NATO helps Allies to boost their cyber defences by sharing information
about threats, investing in education and training, and through exercises. NATO also has cyber defence
experts that can be sent to help Allies under attack.
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What are the economic effects of Brexit so far? Estimates of hit to UK economy since June 2016 vote
range from £20bn to £40bn © FT montage Chris Giles, Economics Editor June 24, 2018 Print this page
202 The Brexit vote two years ago has damaged the UK economy, as a weaker pound has squeezed
household incomes and uncertainty has hit investment. On that, economists from all sides agree —
despite having their differences over the extent of the damage and whether the harm will intensify. On
the two-year anniversary of the EU referendum, forecasters’ estimates of how much Brexit has dragged
down the economy range from around 1 per cent of gross domestic product, or £20bn a year, to 2 per
cent, or £40bn a year. An FT average of several models suggests that by the end of the first quarter of
this year, the economy was 1.2 per cent smaller than it would have been without the Brexit vote. That
represents a £24bn hit to the economy, amounting to a “Brexit cost” of £450m a week or £870 a
household per year. The figure is increasing; when the FT last carried out a similar exercise, in
December, the average cost was £350m a week. Even the most vociferous supporter of Brexit, Professor
Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, says his pre-referendum forecasts were too optimistic. “The
accumulated error between the second quarter of 2016 and fourth quarter of 2017 was a 1.2 per cent
overestimate for us,” he wrote recently. But Prof Minford also pointed out that the hit to growth has
been significantly smaller than the Treasury predicted in its pre-referendum short-term forecasts. The
Treasury had wrongly assumed the government would immediately begin the two-year Article 50
divorce process from the EU — which Theresa May eventually triggered in March 2017, rather than in
June 2016 — and that the authorities would provide neither fiscal nor monetary stimulus. The Brexit
Files: How will leaving the EU affect the UK economy? It put forward two scenarios that did not come to
pass: a “shock” in which the economy failed to grow in the immediate aftermath of the vote, and a
“severe shock” in which the economy contracted. While the Treasury’s forecasts were clearly incorrect,
quantifying any Brexit hit to the UK economy is a perilous task, since an exact number is impossible to
produce. Such estimates rely on hypotheticals, since they compare the economy’s recent record of
growth with an estimate of how it would have performed if the British public had voted to remain in the
EU. Even the historical part of the equation is far from straightforward, because recent economic data
are regularly revised. Robert Chote, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, warned in March “not
to place too much weight on early estimates of short-term movements in GDP as they are both hard to
measure and destined for revision”. Nevertheless, economists are paid to make estimates. Sam Hill at
RBC Capital Markets estimated that, due to factors such as weaker household consumption and business
investment, Brexit had cut roughly 1 percentage point off national income by the end of 2017. But he
added that the Bank of England’s decision to cut interest rates spared the country a pure Brexit effect of
“approximately 1.5 percentage points”. BoE governor Mark Carney has estimated a bigger Brexit effect,
based on the disparity between the bank’s pre-referendum forecasts — which assumed the UK would
remain in the EU — and subsequent reality. “If you look at where the economy is today relative to that
forecast, it is more than 1 per cent below where it was, despite very large stimulus provided by the Bank
of England, a fiscal easing by the government, and global and European economies that are much, much
stronger than they were previously,” Mr Carney told MPs on the Treasury select committee in May “If
you adjust for those factors, and one should not be too precise about it, the economy is about 1.5 per
cent, 1.75 per cent, up to potentially 2 per cent lower than it would have been,” Mr Carney added,
saying it was reasonable to ascribe some of the shortfall to Brexit. The FT’s analysis produces an average
from a range of models. It takes the 2.8 per cent growth racked up since the referendum as a fact and
compares it with various alternative outcomes, based on simple assumptions. The smallest hit, of 0.7
per cent, uses the historical growth rate between 2010 and the 23 June 2016 referendum as its point of
reference, while one of the largest, a 2 per cent hit, is based on a comparison with the group of seven’s
average growth rate since the vote. In that time, the UK has slumped from the top to the bottom of the
G7 league table. Recommended Chris Giles May’s Brexit dividend and other myths worth exploding
Another approach is based on comparisons with countries with similar economic growth to the UK
ahead of the referendum. One such model, which gives Hungary a 23 per cent weight in the calculations,
is used by John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, and suggests that output
is now 2.1 per cent lower than it would have been. All these individual calculations are controversial, but
pro-Brexit economists agree there is no perfect way of producing the estimates. Julian Jessop, chief
economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market think-tank, assesses the Brexit hit to be 1
per cent, but thinks the negative impact on growth is likely to be transitory. “Part of this hit is temporary
and reversible, especially on the investment side, rather than permanent, and also not necessarily a sign
of worse to come when we do actually leave,” he said. With just nine months to go before the UK leaves
the EU and no agreement with the EU near, other economists argue it would rash to predict an end to
the pain. “During 2018 the Brexit effect is set to continue to accrue and could reach a cumulative two
percentage points of GDP by year-end,” said Mr Hill. “Although real income growth should return, it is
still expected to result in sub-par consumption growth. Headwinds to business investment could persist,
whilst the offset from net trade remains underwhelming.”