, Columnist
Trump Is the Least of NATO's Problems
Unclear goals, bickering leaders and a changing world are pushing the alliance to the breaking point.
Not what it once was.
Photographer: Nicholas Kamm/AFP
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It was meant to be a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the mood at a gathering of the alliance’s leaders this week in London was anything but celebratory. There was no disguising the fact that NATO is in deep — even existential — trouble.
Nothing illustrated this unease more than the brief elation among NATO hands over Donald Trump’s surprising defense of the alliance. If the American president, previously a NATO skeptic, had had a change of heart, perhaps things were not so dire after all.