Brussels summit could signal NATO’s decline

This is exceedingly unusual in NATO’s 69-year history. Almost immediately before the NATO summit in Brussels, US President Donald Trump criticized Germany for being “captive” to Russia and called the other NATO member states “delinquent”. Hours before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump described the European Union as one of his greatest “foes”. Earlier, he had said, “frankly, Putin may be the easiest of all” to talk with.

Such remarks, appalling for US allies, could be deliberately made as tactics to force the NATO allies to increase their defense spending. None of Trump’s predecessors could push the US’ NATO allies to spend more on defense to share the collective defense burden. But a merciless Trump seems to have done that. He said NATO members have added $41 billion extra for defense spending; NATO will be taking in an additional $33 billion or more and at least 17 NATO member states have pledged to reach the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense by 2024.

When Trump described NATO as “obsolete” during his presidential campaign, he was like the child who pointed out that the emperor, in fact, wasn’t wearing any clothes. NATO has been searching for a “mission” to justify its post-Cold War survival. That is why it intervened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya and conducted anti-piracy activities in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. But it still needs a bigger “threat” to justify the existence of the 29-nation military bloc.

... the Brussels summit might well become a watershed in NATO’s eventual decline.