Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal have collaborated on a resolution requiring the United States to activate Article 5 of the NATO Collective Defense Treaty under specific circumstances. The resolution states that if Russia utilizes nuclear weapons or carries out attacks on the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant resulting in radiation leakage, it should be treated as an attack on NATO.
During a press conference, Senator Lindsey Graham announced, “We are presenting a resolution today that declares any detonation of a nuclear device by Russia or Belarus in Ukraine, whether to halt a counteroffensive or to undermine the will of the Ukrainian people, should be considered an assault on NATO.”
Article 5 of the NATO treaty stipulates that an armed attack on any member nation is regarded as an attack on the entire alliance.
To trigger Article 5, substantial evidence of an attack on the affected state’s territory must be presented. The affected state then formally requests the invocation of Article 5, which is subsequently reviewed by the North Atlantic Council. Each member nation is represented by a single delegate, such as Ambassador Jakub Landovsky for the Czech Republic. The Council makes a unanimous decision, although not all member countries are obliged to participate in the response.
Once Article 5 is invoked, each member nation has the discretion to take individual or collective action as deemed necessary to ensure the security of NATO territory. The article grants members significant latitude in choosing the forces and extent of their involvement. It does not automatically entail armed conflict among NATO countries.
