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Comment by IanDrake | Hacker News Reader

How could Taiwan - a country not in the North Atlantic - join NATO?

Good point. When I think of Turkey, the first thing that comes to my mind is "North Atlantic", same as you apparently.

Turkey is explicitly in the geographic area covered by NATO, though (I would assume North Atlantic, North America, Mediterranean, Europe, Turkey and Algerian Departments of France Treaty Organization or NANAMETADFTO was considered too long of a name).

Taiwan is thousands of miles outside of it.

Even worse, it would have had to be NANAMETADFTO OTFDATEMANAN to keep the French happy.

The Mediterranean is technically part of the North Atlantic. If Greece can be in NATO, why not Turkey?

But no, most of Europe isn't interested in spilling blood over Taiwan, just like it isn't interested in spilling blood over Ukraine.

> The Mediterranean is technically part of the North Atlantic.

I'm not sure this is true. What actually happened is that NATO countries realized expanding NATO is in their interest so they ignored the "north atlantic" part of the treaty. While I doubt taiwan will be invited any time soon it wouldn't surprise me at all if Japan or even South Korea is.

It probably isn't so much the spilling of blood that it isn't interested in rather than the chances of wholesale evaporation but otherwise your point stands.

Presumably by agreeing to the terms of the treaty and by being accepted by existing members. It's the North Atlantic Treaty organization, not the North Atlantic Organization

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