NATO Will Likely Survive Trump, But at a Cost

With the election of Donald Trump to his second term as president, my phone lines began buzzing with calls from anxious Europeans. They had many questions, but they boil down to a single query: Will President Trump pull out of NATO? It is a question worth addressing, although the short answer is I think it is unlikely he would simply drop out of the venerable alliance. But buckle up for a bumpy ride.

There have been many calls over the years for the dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as almost constant frustration with the inequitable levels of defense spending among its members. When I was supreme allied commander of NATO a decade ago, I spent a great deal of time pushing the Europeans to even hit their self-approved goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their militaries. They never got close in those years, despite unrelenting demands involving Afghanistan, Iraq, global terrorism, piracy off the coast of Africa and frequent cyberattacks from Russia.