[2][3] During policy negotiations in the 1990s, a primary controversy regarding PfP was its ability to be interpreted as a program that is a stepping stone for joining NATO with full Article 5 guarantees.

Amidst the security concerns in Eastern Europe after the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union, and also due to the failure of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), the program was launched during the summit in Brussels, Belgium between January 10 and 11, 1994.

[7] The NACC was first announced at the Rome summit in November 1991 as NATO's first attempt to incorporate the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies into European security frameworks.

[3] After 1991, the NACC held annual ministerial meetings and regular consultations between Eastern and Western representatives of NATO's political, economic, and military committees.

The objective of these meetings was to strengthen the relations between Eastern and Western Europe, thereby contributing to the regional political and military stability.

The emergence of new states such as Croatia and Ukraine, along with the split of Czechoslovakia, led to Slovakian Foreign Minister, Milan Kňažko, urging the creation of a security framework that would facilitate cooperation on all levels with NATO.

[16] The program was also put in place in order to strengthen security cooperation with states in Central and Eastern Europe that were not part of the NATO alliance.

[22] During the NATO summit in Riga on November 29, 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia were invited to join PfP,[23] which they did[24] on December 14, 2006.

Their views on PfP focused on maintaining the ability and readiness to contribute to operations "under the authority and/or responsibility of the United Nations and/or NATO and/or the OSCE".

In November 2024, Christodoulides reversed his previous stance and revealed a plan to deepen Cyprus' relations with NATO and eventually join as a full member.

However, four NATO member states, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain, do not recognize Kosovo's independence and have threatened to block its participation in the program.

16 former member states of the PfP (namely Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) have subsequently joined NATO.

During the post-Cold War era, equal distribution of opportunities to contribute to peacekeeping operations was made, but the status of middle and neutral powers such as Sweden, Finland, and Ireland also decreased.

Although the PfP has made important contributions to crisis management, such as peacekeeping operations, Ireland and Austria are still not NATO members.

[6] In 2003, the alliance assumed strategic command, control, and coordination of the mission and established a permanent International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul.

[43] President Dmitry Medvedev referred to an attack by Georgia against a Russian military base in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, as "Russia's 9/11".

For instance, the average annual Wales Initiative Funding (WIF) established for the program was set at $43 million during the fiscal years of 1996 to 2005.