In the realm of foreign affairs, Donald Trump is unique among presidents since World War II in his disdain for foreign commitments. During his presidential campaign, Trump called the NATO alliance “obsolete” and disparaged multilateral trade agreements as weakening U.S. economic leverage on the international stage. The World Trade Organization, he said, was “a disaster,” and the North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst trade deal ever.”
Yet alliances — ongoing, reciprocal political, economic and security commitments with other countries, based on shared interests and values — have been an important element of U.S. foreign policy since the launch of the Marshall Plan in 1947.
And this philosophy, though rooted in the Cold War and the painful lessons of the interwar years, still matters. When the Berlin Wall, the symbol of communist enslavement, was smashed in 1989, there was arguably no longer any reason for NATO to exist. Its common enemy, the Soviet Union, would disintegrate two years later, along with the alliance imposed on its neighbors: the Warsaw Pact.
