The three lives of NATO, born from a gamble, now deemed obsolete by Trump
BackgroundCreated out of America's desire to protect Europe from communism, the North Atlantic Alliance underwent profound changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It expanded and took on new missions, though it never fully proved its effectiveness. Today, it faces fierce challenges from Donald Trump.
What if the North Atlantic Alliance ceased to exist tomorrow? Until recently, for most European observers, the hypothesis was so unimaginable that it was not even worth considering. In 2020, Robert Zoellick, who served as US secretary of state from 2005 to 2006 under Republican president George W. Bush, wrote in his book America in the World that forging alliances was one of the five pillars of his country's foreign policy, essential to the proper functioning of the international system.
Five years later, a very different Republican, Donald Trump, has so alarmed his allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that he has put them on edge ahead of the June 24-25 summit in The Hague.
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