ABSTRACT
In 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Washington Treaty in muted tones. The uncertainty created by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy goals may lead to yet another adaptation in NATO or it may set the relationship between Europe and the United States on a different course in which the Alliance no longer functions as the essential forum of security and defence cooperation. The caveat issue in Afghanistan bred resentment within the Alliance and exposed a long-term disagreement about whether NATO should be a global security organization committed to crisis management in out-of-area operations or a regional collective defence organization whose sole focus is on Euro-Atlantic security. NATO’s need to adapt to Russia’s pressure on its eastern flank re-ignited the Cold War burden-sharing question between Europe and the United States. NATO is a hybrid international actor that is neither supranational like the European Union, nor politically hamstrung like the United Nations.
