NATO has a birthday coming up. On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will turn 70. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949. Its first twelve members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, and West Germany in 1955. Post-Franco Spain joined in 1982. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in eastern Europe rushed to join, thirteen more so far, with North Macedonia being the thirtieth soon.
There will be a number of articles on NATO’s anniversary in the next few days. The Economist has already published a lengthy piece on “NATO at 70” in its March 16 issue. Ivo Daalder, former ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. wrote an excellent article in last Friday’s Chicago Tribune. While these articles cover the subject of NATO and its future better than I can, I would like to add a few thoughts to the birthday celebration for what has been best defensive military alliance in history, thoughts related to its future.
Concerns about NATO’s future have increased, especially among the foreign policy elite, since Donald Trump was elected president 2016. President Trump, after all, said NATO was obsolete while on the campaign trail in 2016,1 and he has been pretty obnoxious since then about the failure of many NATO countries to increase up their defense spending in line with commitments they have made in 2014 to get their defense spending up to 2% of GDP by 2024.
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