Trump is against NATO

Zhanara Omarova

New US President Donald Trump expressed his opinion that NATO is becoming useless. He stated that NATO is old because it was created long years ago and the main problem is that it cannot protect the United States from terrorism. He explained it by low funding which other countries should fund in order to support NATO. He also criticizes EU and says that Britain had made a good choice when they decided to leave the EU.  Trump criticized Germany and its leader Angela Merkel for the allowance of free movement of refugees and states that Europe can no longer protect itself from terror. Prussia or modern Germany the first country where military forces appeared as an effective organized structure (Huntington 1957) and now according to  Trump cannot no longer defend itself from terrorism.

I think  Terrorism is  a modern type of war. Different countries handle this problem in different  ways. This type war as other types need troops, funding and structure. As Porter(1994) states war leads to development of logistics, improvement of universal education and healthcare but first of all in order to do that  things we need money and that is why Trump emphasizes that lack of funding in NATO leads to its inefficient  function. Report from defense expenditures of NATO   countries shows that only 5  NATO member states out of 28 states spend enough money and the leading role take up USA which is very unfair according to US president.

I would like to explain this issue by collective action and free riders problem. Huntington states that military is monopolized by the state and if certain state has army this state allocates enough money and this army is governed by certain state. Which makes this army structured. However, NATO does not belong to one special country and here arises the question of free-riding where one state rely on another in terms of funding but all states want to use security that offers NATO. Huntington states that modern military officer should be educated expert with responsibility but in order to train such officer military needs financing which is core problem of NATO today. Last year Obama sent 3500 troops and more than 100 vehicles to Poland as a response to Russian aggression but now  there is a question:  will the new president return these troops back to the US?

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Huntington, Samuel P. 1957. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

Porter, Bruce D. 1994.War and the Rise of the State 1st ed. Free Press