The most powerful destabilizing force facing NATO today

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(CNN) - NATO is having an unhappy birthday.

Champagne corks were supposed to appear when the leaders of the most powerful military alliance in the world met outside London this week. Founded in 1949 by countries that gathered to fight Soviet communism, NATO won that victory 30 years ago, when the fall of the Berlin Wall announced the collapse of the USSR. It should have been all smooth from there.

But divisions and controversy are now tearing apart NATO unity. Turkey is closer than ever to Russia, the nation for which the mutual defense alliance was first established to counter it. French President Emmanuel Macron declared the "brain death" of the alliance, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a girl from East Germany from the Cold War, responded by giving her a rhetorical pull of ears.

Normally, the president of the USA. UU. I could put my heads together. But Donald Trump himself is the most powerful destabilizing force facing NATO today.

It's not just that he scolds the allies for not fulfilling defense spending commitments (a fair criticism in many cases), or that he dismisses the threat that many NATO partners still perceive from the Kremlin. It's that Trump sees the historic alliance as a protection scam instead of a multiplier of the US global diplomatic and military power. UU. No one knows if he believes in NATO's fundamental principle of mutual self-defense.

LOOK : NATO, in the process of change or the beginning of the end?

NATO is not yet on life support; Its institutional foundation is too strong within the US and Allied armed forces and capitals. But on his 70th birthday, he is looking for his soul.

'She hadn't had so much fun in 25 years'

This is a look back. Trump will catch up in the old days with Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom today, while organizing a reception for NATO leaders at Buckingham Palace. According to the president of the United States, the two get along very well, despite their controversial maneuver in July 2018 against the monarch. As a New Yorker, Trump should have known that it was a violation of universal human right to walk in a straight line; however, real commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told CNN that the body block does not technically violate the real protocol.

Dangerous Guests

Surely it is not much to ask.

Boris Johnson just needs his most important visitor this week to be discreet, to come and go without problems and to avoid getting his nose in the political affairs of Britain. Unfortunately, his guest is Donald Trump.

The president of the USA The United States, which is immensely unpopular among the British and a great fan of Johnson, could not arrive at a worse time for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, just days before a general election.

That tradition in which foreign leaders do not interfere in the choices of others that Johnson referred to the other day? Trump has never heard of that. He has already entered the campaign, beating Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn and competing with the head of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, a constant thorn on Johnson's right side.

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Trump sees Johnson as a populist-nationalist cousin and will try to accommodate him, even keeping his distance this week. But the trip could easily be pear-shaped: Trump always acts at the moment, often without foresight. His temper sometimes betrays his own political interests. If he is attacked, he returns the blow with force, which means that Corbyn, or another bitter enemy, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, could cause an eruption that would be uncomfortable for Johnson. And his foreign policy is always ultimately about satisfying internal political goals, rather than appeasing his hosts.

Invited or not, Trump will be Trump. That is why the electoral leaders of the Conservative Party cannot wait for Air Force One to return home.

"I don't trust anyone at all"

Volodymyr Zelensky sounds as if he were at the end of his tie, after being carried away by a mess of political judgment from the United States for retained military aid while his country struggles with Russia-backed separatists. "You have to understand. We are in war. If you are our strategic partner, you cannot block anything for us, ”said the Ukrainian president in an interview with Time , L e Monde, Der Spiegel and Gazeta Wyborcza .

When asked if he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin as a negotiator, Zelensky replied: "I don't trust anyone at all."

NATO