President Trump has agreed to meet the leaders of NATO at a summit in late May, the alliance said Monday — an apparent first step in his efforts to push it to focus more on counterterrorism and for members to spend more on their militaries. The announcement came amid doubts about Trump’s commitment to NATO, an alliance he called “obsolete” days before his inauguration. Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had a phone conversation Sunday evening “where they reconfirmed the importance of the alliance in troubled times,” NATO said in a statement. More recently, the defense alliance has returned to its Cold War roots by focusing on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequent fueling of a war in eastern Ukraine. It remains unclear what, if any, response the Trump administration will take.

Source: Washington Post February 06, 2017 11:37 UTC