NATO Flag<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSymbolism:<\/h3>\n
The colors of the flag carry cultural, political, and regional meanings. The dark blue field represents the Atlantic Ocean, while the circle stands for unity among the member states of NATO. The compass rose symbolizes the direction towards the path of peace, the goal that member states strive for; it has been updated once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989\u20131991 removed the de-facto main adversary of NATO and caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO’s purpose, nature, tasks, and focus on the continent of Europe. This shift started with the 1990 signing in Paris of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe between NATO and the Soviet Union, which mandated specific military reductions across the continent that continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. At that time, European countries accounted for 34 percent of NATO’s military spending; by 2012, this had fallen to 21 percent. NATO also began a gradual expansion to include newly autonomous Central and Eastern European nations, and extended its activities into political and humanitarian situations that had not formerly been NATO concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5,6,7,54,18,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smoketreemanor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}