75 Years of NATO: What Does Its Future Hold?
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is celebrating its 75th anniversary on 4 April, and most people working in international relations – and even ordinary citizens such as ourselves – do not know a world without it. NATO has been the great protector of Europe; more specifically, each of the Organization’s member states (31, in the process of becoming 32 with the accession of Sweden) has protected the continent from the threat of external aggression in the past, when the Soviet Union and countries of the Warsaw Pact represented a great adversary. This has also been the case when the Soviet bloc dissolved in the following years, and even now, when long-time opposition seems to be recurring. Yet, despite the continuous expansion of the coalition – with requests for new admissions – the future of the Alliance is unclear, especially in the event of the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Trump has never concealed his opinions on NATO, considering the commitment too burdensome and not so strategic for his country. In this interview with Andrea Colli – Full Professor of Global History in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University – we discuss the past, present and future of the coalition.