Alexander Vershbow, The Hill (USA)
Trump’s low regard for NATO has been publicly manifest in his incessant comments castigating Allies for failing to meet their obligation to spend two percent of GDP on defense (which conveniently omit the fact that allies pledged only to meet that target by 2024). In the tumultuous final session of last July’s NATO Summit in Brussels, Trump reportedly said the United States might have to “do its own thing” — a thinly veiled threat to pull out of the 1949 Washington Treaty — if Allies did not meet, or preferably exceed, the two-percent goal. One can only imagine the smile on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s face when he read the news from Brussels and welcomed the President a few days later in Helsinki.