WASHINGTON — To celebrate the 70th anniversary of NATO, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gathered ministers from all the nations in the military alliance on Wednesday night in the same hall where Harry S. Truman signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact in 1949. “No military alliance in the world can remotely do what we do,” Mr. Pompeo said, hailing NATO’s success. But the forces pulling that alliance apart were evident everywhere. The bonds among the core nations that signed the original treaty, which was displayed next to Mr. Pompeo, are fracturing. Vice President Mike Pence declared at the celebration that Germany risked becoming a “captive of Russia” because of its embrace of a direct energy pipeline to Russia.

Source: New York Times April 04, 2019 23:03 UTC