 The world's biggest defence alliance NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is currently convening its 2022 summit in Madrid, Spain. The meeting which is being held from June 28th to 30th comes at a time when tensions are at the peak between Russia and Ukraine. The ongoing NATO summit will discuss organisational issues as well as the war in Ukraine and the membership bid of two new countries, Finland and Sweden. Senior Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg has claimed that strengthening the alliance is the priority in the face of growing danger from Russia and China. The summit will also be attended by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, despite Ukraine not being a NATO member. He has been demanding that NATO play a more active role in his country's defence against the ongoing Russian attack. He is being strongly backed by US President Joe Biden, among others. The US has already pledged billions of dollars of weapons supplies to Ukraine. Russia has however said that NATO's support to Ukraine proves its claim that the West and NATO are using the country in a proxy war against it. Russia started its military operation inside Ukraine in February after the US and NATO refused to discuss Ukrainian membership to the group and proposals of heavy weapons deployment. Apart from the war in Ukraine, NATO members are also going to discuss the membership bid of two Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Finland. The two countries had dumped their decades-old neutrality recently. The membership in NATO would mean deployment of Western forces and weapons in these countries. Both countries either share borders with Russia or lie in close proximity. NATO's eastward expansion in Europe by adding more members, especially since the Cold War, has been a contentious issue that has faced active Russian opposition. NATO was first established in 1949 by imperialist nations including the US, France and the UK. Defeating the Soviet Union and halting the spread of socialism were its declared goals. After the fall of the USSR and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact, NATO not only survived but focused more on the bloc's growth and more crucially the position of US in Europe. In addition to this, NATO proceeded to bring former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe into its fold, expanding from 16 member states in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today. US nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO member countries in Europe. Military bases capable of firing ballistic and nuclear missiles are positioned as close as Poland and Romania. NATO has a combined military budget of over 1 trillion US dollars and accounts for over 57% of the world's total military expenditure. The transatlantic military alliance has also recently tried to encourage all its members to spend at least 2% of the GDP on defence as accepted in its summit meeting in 2014. NATO is also infamous for getting involved in wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other countries to pursue the imperialist interests of the US and its allies. NATO is one of the biggest climate polluters in the world and has also been criticised for generating poverty and inequality as it actively encourages war.