The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pact launched 70 years ago in the ashes of World War II to face Stalin's Soviet threat and bind Western Europe and the US together, is the world's foremost military alliance.

The success of its deterrent power can be seen in a simple reality: NATO's first combat mission only came after the Soviet Union's collapse.

During the Cold War, NATO effectively defended Western Europe with US nuclear weapons, as NATO's office of the historian notes.

Read more: The real purpose of Russia's 100-megaton underwater nuclear doomsday device

From the treaty signed on April 4, 1949 by 12 powers, NATO has grown to 29 countries and expanded to include former Soviet states on Russia's border, which has angered Moscow.

Its forces now confront Russia, which under President Vladimir Putin seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine by force in 2014. The Russian military is developing supposedly unstoppable missiles that travel more than five times the speed of sound and a doomsday torpedo that could irradiate an entire ocean.

This is a look at six times NATO faced a crisis that took it to the brink of war, or into combat.

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Worst NATO crises in 70 years as world's foremost military ...