The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949, by 12 European and North American countries to provide collective defense against the emerging threat that the Soviet Union posed to the democracies of Western Europe. Since its inception, NATO’s key objective has been to achieve a lasting peace in the North Atlantic area that is based on the common values of democracy, rule of law, and individual liberty. Currently, 28 countries are members of NATO. Article 10 of the treaty permits accession of additional European states if they are in a position to further the treaty’s principles and contribute to North Atlantic security. Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, members of NATO agree that an armed attack against any member is considered to be an attack against them all. The NATO PfP program was launched at the January 1994 NATO summit in Brussels as a way for the alliance to engage the former members of the Warsaw Pact and other former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. Currently, 22 countries from Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia are in the PfP program. The objectives of the partnership are to (1) facilitate transparency in national defense planning and budgeting processes; (2) ensure democratic control of defense forces; (3) maintain the capability and readiness to contribute to crisis response operations under the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations; (4) develop cooperative military relations with NATO for the purposes of joint planning, training, and exercises for peacekeeping; search and rescue; and humanitarian operations; and (5) develop forces that are better able to operate with NATO members. NATO also uses the PfP to support countries interested in NATO membership, although it does not promise eventual membership. NATO does not extend Article 5 protection to PfP countries or any country other than NATO members. In addition to the PfP program, NATO has established partnerships with other groups of countries located beyond Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia to build security relationships and maintain dialogue with countries in other regions of the world. NATO established the MD partnership in 1994—the same year as the PfP. As of September 2010, it includes seven African and Middle Eastern countries. At the June 2004 NATO Summit in Istanbul, NATO established the ICI, and invited six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council to participate. NATO has also established formalized partnership relationships with additional countries, referring to them as “Partners across the Globe.” Since the mid-1990s, NATO has initiated several military operations, most notably the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Initially, ISAF was a coalition of volunteering countries deployed under the authority of the UN Security Council. In August 2003, the Alliance assumed strategic command, control, and coordination of the mission and established a permanent ISAF headquarters in Kabul. Since then, the operation has grown to about 120,000 troops from 47 countries, including all NATO members, as of August 2010. NATO also intervened militarily in the aftermath of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia to halt conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, Kosovo in 1999, and Macedonia in 2001. Since December 2004, the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) has been the only remaining large-scale Allied force deployment in the Balkans, although NATO maintains headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Skopje, Macedonia; to assist the host governments in defense reform and NATO integration. In addition, NATO’s naval forces lead Operation Active Endeavour, a maritime surveillance operation, launched after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to detect, deter, and protect against terrorist activity in the Mediterranean. NATO vessels started patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean in October 2001 and eventually expanded to the entire Mediterranean in March 2004. NATO also has a noncombat training mission in Iraq, begun in 2004; and a counterpiracy mission off the Horn of Africa, known as Operation Ocean Shield, begun in 2009. DOD launched the WIF program in July 1994 to support countries that are members of the PfP program. DOD uses defense-wide Operation and Maintenance, and Research and Development funds for the WIF program according to the laws and policies governing these types of funds. The WIF program’s goals include: assisting PfP partners in building defense institutions that are transparent, accountable, and professional; improving U.S./NATO-PfP partner interoperability to enhance partner contributions to coalition operations; supporting PfP partner integration with NATO; and ensuring democratic control of the armed forces. WIF funding supports the participation of PfP countries in bilateral and multilateral military exercises and military contact programs, including seminars, workshops, conferences, exchanges, and visits. Within DOD, different components are responsible for the implementation of the WIF program. Appendix II provides descriptions of these components and the level of WIF funding allocated to them in the fiscal year 2010 budget. WIF funding may also be used in conjunction with other security cooperation programs that support the goals of the WIF and PfP programs. Appendix III provides descriptions of these related programs and the level of funding they provided to PfP countries in fiscal year 2009. DOD relies on other funding, such as the Coalition Support Fund, to cover the cost of partner countries’ participation in NATO operations. The PfP program has evolved in four key ways since July 2001, when we last reported on the program. First, several PfP countries from Central and Eastern Europe have become members of NATO, resulting in a decline in the total number of PfP countries and the number of PfP countries aspiring to NATO membership. Second, NATO has developed additional mechanisms for engaging with PfP countries, allowing partners additional opportunities to tailor their participation in the PfP based upon their individual objectives and capacities. Third, the growing size and significance of the NATO operation in Afghanistan has increased NATO’s emphasis on developing PfP countries’ capabilities for participating in NATO military operations and the strategic importance of the Caucasus and Central Asian PfP countries to NATO, given their proximity to Afghanistan. Fourth, as NATO has taken steps to wind down its peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans, it has increasingly used the PfP to build cooperative relationships with countries in the region, marking a shift in its role in stabilizing that part of Europe. Since 2001, several PfP countries from Central and Eastern Europe have become members of NATO, resulting in a decline in the total number of PfP countries and the number of PfP countries aspiring to NATO membership. While NATO has utilized the PfP for a variety of purposes, historically, NATO’s primary focus for the program has been to assist interested countries in preparing to become NATO members. However, the PfP’s function as a pathway to membership has diminished as the composition of countries in the program has changed. As figure 1 shows, 12 former PfP countries have joined NATO since the PfP’s establishment in 1994, including 9 countries since our previous report on the PfP in 2001. While 9 countries have left the PfP since 2001, 5 new countries have also joined—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Malta, Montenegro, Serbia, and Tajikistan—bringing the total number of current PfP members to 22 (see fig. 2). While the PfP has always included some countries that did not aspire to join NATO, NATO and U.S. officials with whom we spoke noted that the number of PfP countries seeking NATO membership has declined as the majority of those countries interested in joining have already done so. Of the 22 countries currently in the PfP, only 4 are actively pursuing NATO membership: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Ukraine had previously pursued NATO membership, but is no longer doing so, given the outcome of the country’s February 2010 presidential elections. Three of the countries aspiring to membership—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia—have been offered a MAP, the final step that countries complete before NATO offers membership. Nine of 26 PfP countries had MAPs at the time of our previous report in 2001. During the MAP process, countries are required to undertake an intensive set of reforms that extend beyond their defense institutions, in order to bring the countries in line with NATO standards. Macedonia has had a MAP since 1999, and NATO has committed to offering it membership as soon as it resolves its dispute with Greece over its constitutional name. NATO has offered the other two countries a MAP only within the last year. NATO’s Foreign Ministers offered Montenegro a MAP in December 2009. In April 2010, the NATO Foreign Ministers voted to offer Bosnia- Herzegovina a MAP; however, the Foreign Ministers decided that Bosnia- Herzegovina can only fully participate in MAP once it takes the necessary steps to transfer ownership of various immovable military assets (such as bases) from its two entity governments to the central government. Most current PfP countries have not indicated an interest in joining NATO, or, in the case of the five Central Asian PfP countries, are not eligible for NATO membership because of their geographic location outside of Europe. According to NATO, U.S., and PfP country officials, these countries participate in the PfP for a variety of reasons including the opportunity for dialogue with NATO on security issues, the ability to access NATO training and technical assistance to support reform efforts and build interoperability with NATO, the opportunity to contribute to NATO operations, and the desire to counter external pressures from other countries. Since our report in 2001, NATO has created a variety of new partnership mechanisms and modified existing mechanisms to allow PfP countries to tailor their participation in the program based upon their unique capacities and objectives.