“Russia has interfered in elections in Europe, the U.S. and Latin America. China uses influence operations and economic coercion to bend democracies to its will from Oceania to Eastern Europe. Analysts can argue about whether this is a ‘new Cold War.’ Yet it is undoubtedly a high-stakes struggle over both the balance of power and the balance of ideas. It demands that the world’s democracies band together to defend their geopolitical interests and their political institutions…

“The Trump administration deserves credit for re-energizing the Quad and pushing the NATO allies to take the Chinese threat seriously. Yet the president deserves blame not simply for questioning the defense commitments that hold U.S. alliances together, but also for denigrating democratic norms and procedures, fawning over powerful autocrats, and often treating issues of democracy promotion and human rights as mere distractions. The Trump administration calls this ‘principled realism.’ But it’s no way to catalyze the global democratic response that today’s authoritarian challenge demands.”
Hal Brands, Bloomberg

“Troublesome anniversaries are not new for NATO. The alliance has developed effective coping mechanisms to maintain its relevance and cohesion… [But] Trump’s hostility to NATO and the lack of U.S. leadership make the situation in 2019 quite different from past challenges… The big question for 2019, perhaps, is whether the presence of these… coping mechanisms, absent U.S. leadership, will be sufficient to lift NATO from its anniversary blues.”
Garret Martin and Balazs Martonffy, Washington Post

“Strains were evident during Vice President Pence’s afternoon speech at an international conference marking the 70-year anniversary…

“Previous presidents have raised the spending issue, though Trump has stood out for the harshness of his rhetoric, including a reported threat at a NATO conference in Brussels last summer to ‘go it alone’ if the allies didn’t pay up… [One Western diplomat] told The Atlantic that Trump should avoid the appearance of bullying Germany on military spending. Such aggressive messages can boomerang. The diplomat said that ‘it can actually be harder for Germany to spend more if it looks as though they are bowing to U.S. pressure.’”
Kathy Gilsinan & Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic

Many note that “Canada and the European allies came to our defense on 9/11 and invoked the Article 5 mutual-defense clause of the treaty. They viewed Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States as an attack on them as well. NATO allies went into Afghanistan with us where they and partner nations have suffered more than 1,000 combat deaths. Most of those countries remain on the ground with our soldiers to this day. NATO allies have also fought with us in the successful campaign to defeat the Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq. They conduct counterterror operations with us in Africa. The European allies have assumed full responsibility for peacekeeping in Bosnia and the bulk of the burden in Kosovo… NATO is still the world’s strongest military alliance.”
Nicholas Burns and Douglas Lute, Washington Post