Born, slow organization and not in step with the times, the US threatens to get out

NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary this week in Washington in the midst of tensions with US President Donald Trump, who recently questioned the future and usefulness of the Atlantic Alliance. The Spanish newspaper "El Pais" writes it, explaining that the anniversary of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, which took place in Washington on April 4, 1949, will offer the European allies the opportunity to launch an offensive against Trump and try to show him that the Atlantic Alliance not only protects the security of Europe, but also that of the United States. To carry out the arduous task, the secretary general of NATO, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg who today will meet the US president at the White House while on April 3 will give a speech to the United States Congress, meeting in common session.

These are not happy days for NATO. Trump has repeatedly questioned the alliance's usefulness for his "American First" foreign policy and regularly complains that the United States has been changed because few members have achieved the goal of spending at least 2% of their domestic product. gross in defense expenses.

Trum will be able to renew these requests today when he meets NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House.

"I expect President Trump's message to be that the United States is committed to NATO - that NATO is important to our shared security - but at the same time we need a fairer sharing of the burden," Stoltenberg told reporters Monday in Brussels on planned White House talks.

Stoltenberg said on Monday that 29-nation NATO members "disagree on many issues" but such differences are neither new nor unusual for an alliance of democracies.

"The strength of NATO is that, despite these differences, we have always been able to unite around our main task which is to protect and defend each other," he said.

But Secretary of State Michael Pompey will surely echo Trump's criticisms of defense costs for other NATO members when he hosts his counterparts in the State Department on Thursday.

"There is real value in partnering with Western countries who share our democratic values," Pompeo told the National Review Institute Ideas Forum in Washington on Thursday. "There is also real value in a country that is rich and spends more than 1,25 per cent of its GDP on defense."

Exasperation of differences over defense spending is a push by the Trump administration for allies hosting US troops to pay much more for their presence, even hinting at an idea known as "Cost Plus 50" - for governments to pay the full cost, plus a 50 percent premium.

And in a letter this month, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell threatened to reduce intelligence sharing with some NATO allies if they were to buy technical tools from Huawei for the new 5G telecommunications networks.

NATO too is under unprecedented tension due to divisions over how best to deal with Russia. The alliance has so far been able to maintain unity in blaming Russia directly for violations of the Nuclear Forces Treaty. The United States pledged to withdraw from the treaty in February.

This unity could collapse as 2021 approaches, when another crucial arms deal, the new START deal, expires. The United States is also pushing to strengthen the resolve of the other members to confront one of its own, Turkey, which has committed to purchasing a Russian missile defense system, the S-400.

All of this makes Stoltenberg's efforts to document tensions between Trump and other alliance members a difficult diplomatic undertaking.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government released a budget proposal last month that set a preliminary goal of spending 1,5 percent of GDP on the military by 2024 and only gradually moving towards the promise. NATO by 2 percent.

"It's not enough for the president of the United States, I can understand that," Merkel said.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US ambassador to NATO, praised recent increases in German defense spending while calling for more effort.

"Germany is accelerating at a faster pace than they have in the past, but there is still a lot to do for Germany," Hutchison told reporters in Brussels yesterday.

But what is NATO for today?

NATO today is still organized as if the dangers came from the East, according to a cold war scenario. The risks for our stability, on the other hand, come mainly from the South, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and theAfrica. Such risks are terrorism and immigration can destabilize the geopolitical West.

The other danger is cyber warfare, against non-state organizations, and not just terrorist ones. NATO is no longer in step with the times because it is a slow organization: an alliance between states organized to confront other states, according to a “classic” war model.

 

Born, slow organization and not in step with the times, the US threatens to get out

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