ALTHOUGH IT WASN'T ON THE agenda at the three-day IISS Prague Defence Summit in the Czech Republic capital from November 8, there was only one topic of discussion: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. His imminent return to the White House has had NATO members quickly reassessing their plans for supporting Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion as well as their spending commitments to the group. Experts say that although Trump is perhaps unlikely to pull the U.S. out of NATO, the coming years will be challenging for the alliance, not least because many countries have failed to prepare for Trump's comeback.
"It's a bad surprise for most governments in Europe," former NATO official Edward Hunter Christie told Newsweek. "European policymakers feared and they never concealed it--they feared the prospect of a second Trump presidency." In February, Trump said he would "encourage" Vladimir Putin's Russia to launch attacks on any NATO countries he said were falling short of financial commitments to the alliance. Then-NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg-succeeded in October by the Netherlands former leader Mark Rutte-said at the time that any suggestion that "allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security." Trump has also repeatedly said that he would put a stop to the more than two-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine "within 24 hours" should he be reinstalled in the White House, although few at the IISS believed that would happen.
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