With former President Donald Trump returning to the White House, NATO nations are reflecting worriedly on what the future holds and on just how much they can count on the biggest player in the alliance now that a prominent skeptic will return to the helm.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the alliance and had discussed withdrawing the United States from NATO while in office, senior administration officials told The New York Times in 2019.
Experts say that although Trump is perhaps unlikely to pull the U.S. out of NATO, the coming years will be challenging for the alliance, not least because many countries have failed to prepare for Trump’s triumphant comeback. The spotlight will fall on how Europe handles its security in the face of less certain U.S. backing and who takes charge of funneling aid into Ukraine.
“It’s a bad surprise for most governments in Europe,” former NATO official Edward Hunter Christie told Newsweek. “European policymakers feared—and they never …