Before entering office, then-President-elect Donald Trump vowed to consider withdrawing the US from NATO. However, the US won’t leave the alliance abruptly, Come Carpentier de Gourdon, a geopolitical analyst and the convener of the editorial board of World Affairs journal, told Sputnik.
How Could America Act?
The US may "gradually starve NATO of funds and other resources by repatriating most of the US personnel from bases in Europe, for instance," which would prod European states to maintain the alliance at their costs, Gourdon said.
Washington may also push NATO members to raise their defense budgets to 5% which “would probably put an unacceptable burden on those states,” he went on.
“In that situation, NATO would become moribund and many of its countries would look for alternative arrangements,” the analyst concluded.
Why NATO Could Be Scrapped
It looks like US President Donald Trump has decided NATO’s “free ride is over,” Michael Shannon, political commentator and Newsmax columnist, said in an interview with Sputnik.
“NATO has been ‘unified’ for the past 40 years in letting the US foot the bill and supply the manpower for Europe’s defense,” he noted.
The alliance “can pay its fair share in troops, money and equipment or it can watch the US leave them to their feckless fate. US taxpayers get nothing from this arrangement while EU taxpayers get everything,” Shannon stressed.
It’s unclear if the US will formally withdraw from NATO, but one can see “a major cutback in NATO spending and a drawdown of US manpower in the EU,” according to the analyst.
“When that happens and the other NATO members fail to shoulder their own burden, I can see NATO slowly collapsing like a balloon with a slow leak," the commentator pointed out.