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Comment by willvarfar | Hacker News Reader

NATO has only ever been a defense alliance.

Early in the cold war there were a few senior generals on both sides that thought the US could or should make a first strike against Russia. But the leadership and the populous on both sides of the curtain never thought that was what it was all about at all. The aggressor was always going to be Russia invading western Europe, and NATO was always about defending it.

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Including, of course, the defensive invasion of Afghanistan using article 5.

There have been a long history of "hot" confrontations and proxy wars like Korea, Cuba and Angola, Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan and then the US in Afghanistan etc.

But go ask random people on streets in the US, Russia or Europe, and they will focus on the "cold war" and the iron curtain and NATO's defense of the west against the threat of Soviet expansion.

If you ask about NATO _today_, I'd wager people would see it as a fancy name for "alliance with the US", which includes but is not limited to defense against Russia. A lot of people would think about Afghanistan, for instance.

Yes but only the Afghanistan invasion was a NATO operation, the rest were either US only or US and allied countries, but not NATO.

The NATO treaty only protects members if they were attacked in Europe or the North Atlantic. If bin Laden had hit the Sear Tower instead of the WTC it would probably not have been a NATO operation.

But which exact defensive wars/conflicts has NATO fought?

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