Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Trump Doesn’t Need North Macedonia in NATO

Letting a small country with a puny defense budget join the military alliance serves no purpose.

February 7, 2019 at 10:55 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

U.S. President Donald Trump.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

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North Macedonia signed up this week to become the 30th member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This latest addition to the defense pact, more than any previous one, raises the question of what membership of the alliance really means.

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson has argued that is makes no sense for Americans to die for Montenegro or the Baltic States, even though Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty requires the U.S. to come to the two countries’ aid if they are ever attacked. Asked by Carlson about Montenegro, President Donald Trump expressed a worry that its “strong, aggressive people” could get the U.S. into trouble.