NATO Quint


The Quint is an informal decision-making group consisting of the United States and the Big Four of Western Europe. It operates as a "directoire" of various entities such as NATO and the G7/G20.
The US, France and the United Kingdom are "nuclear-weapon states", while Germany and Italy have nuclear weapon sharing programs.

History

The idea of a trilateral axis on foreign policy issues was proposed by French President Charles de Gaulle to his British and American counterparts. However, that plan was never implemented. Meetings with that goal took place around 1980 between the foreign ministers of these three countries and West Germany, although 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 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.
Quint countries along with Russia and China participate together in global discussions as in the Syrian case, they have joint statements and meetings as in the case of Lebanon.