NATO is having a rough summer. Fresh off U.S. President Donald Trump's deliberately disruptive behavior at the alliance summit in July, NATO has suffered a high-stakes blowup between two key members: the United States and Turkey.
That dispute crystallized over the fate of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, being held in Turkey on spurious charges of supporting a failed coup against Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. It has been punctuated by economic sanctions, escalating threats and counterthreats, and speculation that Turkey might punish Washington by aligning itself with Moscow.
Yet the problems between the U.S. and Turkey run much deeper than the dispute over Brunson, and go back many years. Likewise, the problems NATO confronts run deeper than the unique challenges posed by a U.S. president with no love for Atlanticism. NATO is facing a series of bigger structural challenges. Trump did not cause these problems, but he is not making them any easier to solve, either.
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