History of NATO Atlantic Treaty, which was signed by US President Harry S. Truman in Washington on 4 April 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". Popular support for the Treaty was not unanimous, and some Icelanders participated in a pro-neutrality, anti-membership riot in March 1949. The creation of NATO can be seen as the primary institutional consequence of a school of thought
Enlargement of NATO not seeking NATO membership. US President Barack Obama echoed this position the following week, while calling for greater NATO presence in Eastern Europe. However, in response to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Yatsenyuk announced his intentions to resume the bid for NATO integration on 29 August 2014, and in December 2014, Ukraine's parliament voted to drop the non-aligned status that it adopted in 2010. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has stated that NATO membership is still an option for Ukraine, and support for NATO membership has risen to 63.9 percent in government-controlled Ukraine according to a July 2015