
Ask HN: What would Happen if one NATO country declared war on another one? - MartianSquirrel
What would Happen if one NATO country (let&#x27;s say France) declared war on another one(say.. Canada)?<p>Who would win is irrelevant as everyone would lose;<p>But how would other countries react?
Which side would NATO take?
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rc_hadoken
Kick them both out and then make the winner (or both) reapply as if new
members--which they would be following such an exchange.

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smacktoward
Vladimir? Is that you?

~~~
MartianSquirrel
How did y.. I mean NO!

It's just a slow friday afternoon in the office

~~~
smacktoward
To be serious now, the short answer is that NATO would almost certainly not
get involved, unless the aggressor was egregiously in the wrong.

The best case scenario is that neither party invokes its rights under Article
5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_5)),
which is the bit that requires signatories to treat an attack on one as an
attack on all. That doesn't happen automatically; NATO would only be obligated
to act if one of the fighting parties called on it to do so by invoking their
Article 5 rights. If _neither_ of them do that, the rest of NATO can just
avoid the awkward question altogether and let them fight it out.

If _one_ of the fighting parties invoke Article 5, then NATO is in a bit of a
bind. At that point they can't ignore the issue anymore, they'll be obligated
to either line up behind the signatory or be in breach of the treaty,
rendering it null and void. My guess is that, unless the aggression is
seriously noxious, the most likely result is that NATO would just ignore it
anyway and hope nobody cares too much. If the country that invoked Article 5
doesn't have many friends in NATO, it's possible that the other countries
could just pull a discreet veil of silence over their failure to live up to
their treaty responsibilities. A more likely scenario is that the failure
results in one or more signatories pulling out of the treaty, and NATO breaks
up.

If _both_ of the fighting parties invoke Article 5, then we're well and truly
in uncharted territory. The North Atlantic Treaty doesn't specify that it only
applies to attacks on NATO members by non-NATO members. Again, the most likely
scenario here is that the other members decide not to uphold their treaty
obligations and NATO ceases to exist.

Note that the odds of any of this actually happening are smaller than they
might seem. Beyond the obvious (i.e. the members of NATO are all pretty
friendly to each other, with few _casus belli_ hanging out there), there's
also the fact that Article 6 specifies that the collective action
responsibilities only apply to attacks

 _> on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the
Algerian Departments of France 2, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands
under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north
of the Tropic of Cancer;_

 _> on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over
these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of
any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into
force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic
of Cancer._

So if two NATO members get into a scrap over some old colonial claim in
Africa, say, neither one could call the other treaty signatories into it. It's
explicitly limited to just attacks that take place within a pretty narrowly
defined geographical scope.

(A scope that's sufficiently narrow to raise some interesting questions. For
instance, it arguably would not include an attack on the United States if that
attack only struck Hawaii: [https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-
attack-hawaii/](https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/))

