NATO
New membership in the alliance has been largely from Central and Eastern Europe, including former members of the Warsaw Pact. Accession to the alliance is governed with individual Membership Action Plans, and requires approval by each current member. NATO currently has two candidate countries that are in the process of joining the alliance: Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Macedonia.
In NATO official statements, the Republic of Macedonia is always referred to as the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", with a footnote stating that "Turkey recognizes the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name". Though Macedonia completed its requirements for membership at the same time as Croatia and Albania, who joined NATO in 2009, its accession was blocked by Greece pending a resolution of the Macedonia naming dispute. In order to support each other in the process, new and potential members in the region formed the Adriatic Charter in 2003. Georgia was also named as an aspiring member, and was promised "future membership" during the 2008 summit in Bucharest, though in 2014, US President Barack Obama said the country was not "currently on a path" to membership.
Nuclear escalation
NATO, is an alliance of nations that via three permanent members (USA, UK, and France) is a nuclear alliance. This alliance was formed in order to provide a blanket of security for Western European nations, Canada, and the United States against the Soviet Union. NATO members get the safety of Nuclear weapons being shared to its members from one of the 3 permanent members. However, the U.S. was the primary defender of the other countries upon NATO's formation, due to its vast nuclear arsenal that it lays at the disposal for the organization. NATO's escalation policies did not take hold until the late 1950s. During the previous time the weapons and capabilities of NATO's combined members alongside the U. S's vast nuclear arsenal were enough to keep their citizenry calm. NATO policy would amalgamate from the U. S's initial nuclear strength. Russia lacked ICBM's or long range missiles to directly threaten the U.S. In contrast, the U.S. had stationed bombers within NATO countries in Europe that could deliver nuclear payloads to designated targets within the Soviet Union if they attempted to start a war. One of these was the U.S. Corporal missile with a range of 120 kilometers (70–80 miles) and had a one kiloton warhead. After the late 1950s the USSR was able to raise its Nuclear arsenal and delivery methods to have the U.S become a capable target. Many of the European NATO countries became worried that the US's massive firepower was equaled by the USSR and that the United States would have no reason to come to European aid with the new possibility of any attack from the U.S being met in kind with similar or greater means of nuclear arms directed at the U.S. created NATO's response of ‘Massive Retaliation’.