Good Question: Who Does The U.S. Have Treaties With?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- An attack on one member is an attack on them all.
That is what Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states. But Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday he would challenge that.
When asked if the United States would defend certain allies if Russia attacked, he told the New York Times it would only after reviewing whether those nations "have fulfilled their obligations to us."
So who do we have treaties with? What happens if we don't honor them?
"A treaty is basically an agreement between countries to do something," says Mary Curtin, the diplomat-in-residence at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. "The United States actually has hundreds of treaties that it has signed with other countries."
One of the very first treaties the U.S. signed was the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship back in 1786. Since then, our treaties have dealt with trade, extradition, military bases, ending wars and much more.
But the U.S. has just a handful of what are called Collective Defense Agreements, where the countries agree to come to each other's defense if one of them is attacked.
NATO is one of those Collective Defense Agreements, and was signed in 1949 to restore security in Europe and meet the threat of the Soviet Union. NATO now has 28 members and each member contributes financially to the organization.
The U.S. directly contributes much more than any other country, but is also the richest country in the organization and spends the highest percentage of its GDP on defense.
"The theory is, and it seems to have worked pretty well, that if you make these agreement that you build confidence and security, so that you won't have to invoke those articles that say that you'll go to war in defense of a country," Curtin said.
In addition to NATO, the U.S. has separate, similar deals with Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Japan, South Korea and many of the South and Central American countries. It also has a collective defense arrangement treaty with Southeast Asia that includes Australia, France, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
"Every treaty, like every business agreement, also has clauses that say how you get out of if you decide you don't want to be in it anymore," Curtin said.
If a country decides it does not want to fulfill its side of the treaty, there is no specific punishment. That idea has yet to be tested because, the only time NATO has ever invoked Article 5 was to defend the United States following 9/11.