United States-NATO Ties Under President Trump:An Assessment.
Abstract
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is a military alliance between the United States of America and its transatlantic partners. The alliance treaty was signed in Washington DC on 4th June 1949. Atlantic Charter is a Cold War instrument charged with; deterring and containing Soviet Union's threat, curbing revival of militarism in continental Europe, and political integration of Europe. NATO's quintessential proviso is ARTICLE 5 which piqued; assault on one is assault on all. America's financial and personnel investment outweighs those of partners put together. This paper assesses the relationship between the U.S. and NATO under President Trump. It discovered that Trump interpreted the disparity in financing NATO as a deliberate act of cheating by America’s transatlantic allies. It equally observed that sequel to this development, Trump unprecedentedly and unilaterally directed allies to honour NATO's 2014 resolution of committing 2% of their individual nation's GDP to defence or risk America’s military support should adversaries assault. His ‘order’ shocked European allies because no U.S. leader or institution viewed NATO as an economic exploiter or doubted its quintessentiality to achieving the country's strategic and economic interests globally. The paper uncovers that NATO needs fundamental reforms to effectively counter novel threats emanating from the cyberspace and that enlarging the organization’s membership to include all former Iron Curtains of Eastern Europe and Republics of its former topmost adversary the Soviet Union should be a strategic objective to be perpetually pursued. It concludes that the Atlantic Alliance needs to establish military bases in all continents of the world because of the non-combat or traditional duties it has been performing globally since the end of the Cold War. Keywords: Security, Economy, Budget, Reforms, Cyberspace..