OK... Will do...

A look at NATO, the defensive alliance Trump is calling on to reopen the Strait of Hormuz

By Catherine Nicholls

US President Donald Trump has warned that NATO faces a “very bad” future if countries in the alliance fail to assist in securing the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway currently mostly blocked by Iran.

Members of the defense alliance were quick to respond, with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas saying that the request is “out of NATO’s area of action” and a German government spokesperson saying that the war “has nothing to do with NATO.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 after World War II, and its purpose is to “secure a lasting peace in Europe and North America, based on its member countries’ common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law,” its website says.

The alliance’s “most fundamental principle” is what it calls “collective defense,” meaning that if one NATO member country is attacked, the alliance considers it an attack on every NATO country.

This collective defense, described under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, is triggered when a member country comes under “armed attack” and that country requests collective action as a respose.

Article 6 of the treaty “imposes geographic limitations on the scope of NATO’s mutual assistance obligation, primarily limiting it to the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.”

The first and only time Article 5 has been invoked was in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US; as a result, NATO allies joined the invasion of Afghanistan.