NATO has turned obsolete, should have been disbanded decades ago: Expert
The US-led NATO military alliance has become an obsolete and lifeless organization that should have been dismantled decades ago, says a former US Senate policy adviser and diplomat.
Public confidence in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has fallen sharply in the US, France and Germany since US President Donald Trump came to office, according to new research.
The proportion of people who have a favorable view of NATO dropped at least 10 percentage points in the US, France and Germany between 2017 and 2019, showed a study released on Monday by the Pew Research Center.
Trump called NATO “obsolete” during his election campaign and repeatedly criticized European countries for failing to increase their military budget.
NATO members are required to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on military affairs. This is while the US currently spends around 4 percent.
“Trump was right in 2016 that NATO serves no purpose, it is obsolete,” James George Jatras told Press TV in an interview on Tuesday.
“There is no military threat to the countries of Europe, so why do we have this alliance and why is the United States in it,” Jatras said.
“This alliance should have been disbanded decades ago but it sort of survives as kind of a zombie alliance that goes forward under its own inertia.”
The Pew survey found that a median of 53 percent of people across 16 member countries surveyed had a favorable view of NATO, and 27 percent expressed a negative view.
But between 2017 and 2019, the proportion of people who had a positive view of the alliance had fallen from 62 to 52 percent in the US, 60 to 49 percent in France and 67 to 57 percent in Germany.
NATO diplomats have long feared that Trump's portrayal of NATO as an alliance in crisis might erode US public support.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also questioned the value of NATO. Macron said last year the alliance was experiencing "brain death" because of a perceived failure to help resolve world conflicts.
The French president also suggested that the alliance should not regard Russia as an adversary.
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