The Foreign Service Journal, April 2019

26 APRIL 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL cials alike since the end of the Cold War. From NATO’s strategic purpose to its capabilities gap, anyone remotely acquainted can hum along. But several discontents have grown sharper as the years have moved on. Today, discussions on burden-sharing and the role of the United States are particularly shrill. At the strategic level, U.S. policy toward NATO will be one of the most defining factors for allies in the coming years, and it also poses some of the most serious questions. Will U.S. policy- makers’ patience with anemic European defense spending run out? How much longer will European governments suffer the tone of Washington’s current rhetoric? Will U.S. disenchantment with multilateralism increase? These are just a few of the seri- ously challenging unknowns. At the same time, there is an acute sense of growing geopoliti- cal threats facing the United States and an accompanying irony in high-level U.S. rhetoric toward NATO. The importance of alli- ances has only grown as challenges and competitors proliferate in the increasingly multipolar international environment. O n April 4 partners on both sides of the Atlantic will mark 70 years since the signing of the Washington Treaty and the founding of the NATO Alliance. What should be a momentous occasion to celebrate the stability and peace accompanying one of the most successful alliances in history will be clouded by a difficult political reality, one that has complicated cohesion across the trans-Atlantic space. For those who have studied the alliance’s history, much of today’s discussion will be familiar. It is a well-worn song whose current verses have been stuck in the heads of experts and offi- Steven Keil is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. His work focuses on trans-Atlantic security issues, with an emphasis on the United States, Germany, Russia and the post-Soviet space. Keil was previously a Robert Bosch Fellow at the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union Foreign Policy Working Group in the German Bundestag, as well as in the Eastern European and Eurasian research division at the German Institute for Interna- tional and Security Affairs in Berlin. Earlier he worked in the office of U.S. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.). In a difficult moment, NATO’s historical success, together with current operational advances, will once again see the alliance through. BY STEVEN KE I L ON NATO AT 70 FOCUS Global Shifts and American Political Will as NATO Turns 70 ABBIEROWE/NATIONALARCHIVESANDRECORDSADMINISTRATION