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NATO Quint


The Quint is an informal decision-making group consisting of the United States and the Big Four of Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). It operates as a "directoire" of various entities such as NATO and the G7/ G20.

The US, France and Britain are "nuclear-weapon states", while Germany and Italy have nuclear weapon sharing programs.

The idea of a trilateral axis on foreign policy issues was proposed by French President Charles de Gaulle to his British and American counterparts (see Fouchet Plan). However, that plan was never implemented. Meetings between the foreign ministers of these three countries and West Germany became known as Quad meetings around 1980. They were largely symbolic and led to no real decision. The Quint in its current form seems to have begun as the Contact Group excluding Russia. Nowadays, Quint leaders discuss all major international topics participating in video conferences once every two weeks or meeting one another in various forums such as NATO, the OSCE, the G20 and the UN. The Quint meets also at ministerial and experts' level.



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