, Columnist
NATO Has Two Big Problems: Putin and Trump
The president’s animus for allied leaders will likely derail discussion of Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, cyberattacks and other vital issues.
Still close?
Photographer: Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
The NATO alliance is in a state of high tension heading into the Brussels summit next week.
In some ways, of course, we have been here before. When I served as NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013, we had controversy and disagreements aplenty over Afghanistan and Libya, for example, and endless arguments over equitable burden-sharing between the U.S. and the other allies. Indeed, reports on the decline of NATO have been constant over the decades, especially immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.