; Whereas the first and only time to date NATO invoked Article 5 was less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001; Whereas NATO allies and partners, including NATO aspirant countries Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Ukraine, joined in assuring the security of the United States and the international community by serving alongside United States forces in Afghanistan since 2001; Whereas more than 1,100 NATO ally and partner military personnel in Afghanistan have lost their lives, and thousands have been injured in service to the collective defense guarantee of NATO; Whereas multiple NATO members participated in the coalition against ISIS by providing either military or humanitarian assistance; Whereas, in the face of a burgeoning vacuum in global leadership, Russia is aggressively testing Western democracies, including through ongoing malicious cyber war capabilities; Whereas Russia continues to challenge NATO, including by— (1) deploying cruise missiles, violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty; (2) executing a suspected poisonous gas attack against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia within the borders of the United Kingdom; (3) occupying with military forces the sovereign territory of the European nations of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; (4) waging cyberattacks against the United States and Europe, especially the Baltics, in an effort to undermine democracy and defraud national elections; (5) conducting the largest iteration ever of the Zapad, an annual military exercise, in Belarus with an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 troops in an excessive show of military force close to NATO borders and in violation of the 2011 Vienna Document; (6) forcing Latvia, a NATO member, to close down its commercial airspace due to ongoing Russian military drills in the Baltic Sea; (7) flying two Russian bombers within 30 miles of United Kingdom airspace