NATO Headquarters

Today we went as a group to the headquarters of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, located in Brussels. For those who don't know, NATO is a military alliance consisting of 26 European countries, Canada and the U.S., bound by a treaty that essentially says that an attack on any member country is an attack on all of them. It was originally founded in 1949 in response to a perceived threat in Europe from the former USSR, and has continued in operation today by sending troops to places like Kosovo, Afghanistan, and most recently to the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia to combat piracy. Thus, the organization is quite powerful in international politics and so as a political science major it was insanely cool to be able to visit its main headquarters.

Upon entering NATO headquarters, your passport is checked, all electronics are confiscated until you exit, and you may not bring in any baggage...picture going through airport security. While we were there we received two presentations: one from a diplomat who focuses on the relationship between Scandinavia and the U.S., and another from an official from the U.S. mission to NATO. Although both presenters used a lot of jargon and did an amazing job of not really answering any of our questions (quite common for political spokespersons), it was fascinating to sit in a conference room in NATO and hear these fairly high-ranking officials give us their schpiel. In addition, hearing someone speak from the NATO perspective and and someone speak from the U.S. perspective was an interesting contrast because they were not entirely on the same page, despite the fact that the U.S. contributes more military assistance to NATO than any other member nation.

After our presentations, we got to eat lunch in the NATO cafeteria, which not only had gourmet food but provided us an opportunity to literally sit amongst military generals, diplomats, and officials from all different countries. Some of them might have just been interns or unimportant people, but it was fun to pretend that I was sitting in a room filled with politically powerful individuals. Needless to say, us American kids didn't really fit in.

I treasured the opportunity to visit the institution because it is something that would be quite difficult to do as an ordinary citizen, and hearing from people who actually work there would be next to impossible. It was one of those things that is simply cool to say I have seen!