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"President Donald Trump reversed course on his view of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday, saying it is "no longer obsolete," after months of bashing the alliance as no longer relevant during his presidential campaign. "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete," he said at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House. "The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism," Trump said. "I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change, and now they do...

President Trump on Wednesday said that NATO is “no longer obsolete” — a big change after Trump repeatedly called the alliance obsolete on the campaign trail.

...White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Mr. Tump looks forward to welcoming Montenegro formally into the alliance at a NATO leaders meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on May 25. He said the move is “signaling to other NATO aspirants that the door to membership in the Euro-Atlantic community of nations remains open and that countries in the western Balkans are free to choose their own future and select their own partners without outside interference or intimidation.”

The diplomat who is in line to be America's next NATO ambassador said Monday that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice has been suspected 'for weeks' of involvement in an effort to publicly unmask Donald Trump associates whose names appeared in foreign intelligence reports. And he claimed ten days ago that if Rice and her deputy Ben Rhodes were behind politically motivated leaks of classified intelligence, former president Barack Obama was also in the know. 'Former State Department colleagues of mine have been talking about Susan Rice's role for weeks,' Richard Grenell told DailyMail.com on Monday 'She and her team...

WASHINGTON – The United States should strengthen economic sanctions against Russia and provide defensive weapons to Ukraine in response to Russia’s military buildup in Crimea, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday. Rasmussen, who appeared on a panel at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said the U.S. has a moral obligation to do so because of commitments related to Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament in 1994. That year, Ukraine agreed to destroy its nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for guarantees of assistance from the U.S. and the UK, as well as...

President Donald Trump said in his inaugural address: “We’ve defended other nation’s borders, while refusing to defend our own.” I couldn’t agree more. Today, the question is: Will we add yet another commitment to defend yet another foreign country? For decades, NATO has been an organization where the U.S. disproportionately spends our blood and treasure. The other NATO countries have largely hitched a ride to the U.S. train that subsidizes their defenses and allows them to direct their revenues to domestic pursuits. Adding a country with fewer than 2,000 soldiers to NATO is not in our self-interest. There is no...

Now that the dust has settled on the elections, the time has come (or so some of the punditry in the media assure us) to set aside political acrimony and unite under the new leadership of President-elect Donald Trump and the new House and Senate. Although it’s far from clear what President Trump will choose to prioritize, now that he will face the realities of entrenched political interests in Washington instead of his fired-up political base on the hustings, it seems at least possible that he will show much more sympathy for certain constitutionalist and Americanist causes — such as...

Germany Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel isn’t mincing his words. The pugnacious politician has called a NATO defense spending target being pushed by the US “completely unrealistic” for Germany. “I consider it completely unrealistic to think that Germany will achieve a defense budget of over €70 million per year,” said Gabriel on Friday. “I don’t know of a single German politician who believes that is either achievable or desirable,” he added. At a NATO summit in Wales in 2014, NATO members committed to working towards a goal of 2 percent of each state’s GDP being spent on their military by 2024....

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demands NATO allies pay up as he says it's 'no longer sustainable' for U.S. to fund everyone's defense 'It is no longer sustainable for the US to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO's defense expenditures,' Tillerson said Friday NATO alliance includes 28 member countries, but the U.S. pays a disproportionate amount of money toward the group's common defense Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned in February that Washington could 'moderate' its commitment if allies fail to pay up Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demands NATO allies pay up as he says it's 'no longer sustainable'...

According to the UK Independent, President Trump reportedly handed Angela Merkel an invoice for $300bn, with interest included, to cover Germany's NATO fees.

Serbia's prime minister pledged on Friday that the Balkan country will never join NATO or any other military alliance as Serbia marked the 18th anniversary of the start of NATO airstrikes that stopped its crackdown in Kosovo. Aleksandar Vucic spoke at a ceremony near a railway bridge in southern Serbia where the Western military alliance's missiles struck a passenger train, killing at least 28 people and injuring dozens. "We will never be part of the alliance which killed our children, nor of any other alliance," Vucic said. "They wanted to destroy and humiliate small Serbia and kill its children."

One of those moments you never forget: 18 years ago, before the dawn on March 25, 1999, I stepped outside the door to find The New York Times there on the ground with the headline announcing that NATO had begun its bombing campaign against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. I remember looking at that front page of the paper before picking it up and thinking - "They are really doing it... It's no longer a threat... It's real... It's real... What a mistake... What a mistake..." Then I picked up the paper and went back...

International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates 20,484 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea since the beginning of 2017, with numbers likely to explode as the continent heads into spring. These totals do not include 3,312 migrants picked up off Libya on the 19th of March who are currently en route to Italy, according to the text of the IOM’s report. Including these migrants puts the number of Italian arrivals well ahead of the total for the first three months of 2015 (10,165) and the first three months of 2016 (18,777) – and March 2017 has over a week

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his anti-European rhetoric on Wednesday, warning that the safety of Western citizens could be in peril if European nations persist in what he described as arrogant conduct. Erdogan's remarks came amid tension over Dutch and German restrictions on Turkish officials who tried to campaign for diaspora votes ahead of an April 16 referendum on expanding the powers of the Turkish presidency. "Turkey is not a country that can be pushed and shoved, whose honor can be toyed with, whose ministers can be ousted, whose citizens can be dragged on the ground," Erdogan told...

The White House announced on Tuesday evening that President Trump's first foreign trip will be to Brussels, Belgium, on May 25. Trump will sit down for an inaugural meeting with leaders from the 28 nations that belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). "The President looks forward to meeting with his NATO counterparts to reaffirm our strong commitment to NATO, and to discuss issues critical to the alliance, especially allied responsibility-sharing and NATO's role in the fight against terrorism," the White House Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement. NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg will visit Trump...

Russia is pressing Turkey for access to a key airbase used by the US as it tries to extend its influence in the Middle East. The American-built Incirlik base, about 65 miles from the Syrian border, is used by Nato and has about 50 US nuclear warheads stored on site. A senior Russian politician said that allowing Russian jets and bombers to use it would be a logical continuation of President Erdogan’s efforts to rebuild Turkey’s relations with the Kremlin. “It just remains to come to an agreement with Erdogan that we get the Nato base Incirlik as [our] primary…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip an April 5-6 meeting of NATO foreign ministers for a U.S. visit by the Chinese president and will travel to Russia later in the month, U.S. officials said on Monday, a step allies may see as putting Moscow's concerns ahead of theirs.

What is Democratic socialism? Bernie Sanders, often criticized for endorsing this political philosophy, explained that his view is in sync with America’s development. He also called for shifting foreign policy and creating a “new NATO” including Russia. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) spoke in front of an auditorium full of supporters at Georgetown University on Thursday, arguing that his endorsement of the much-vaunted political philosophy of democratic socialism makes him the genuine heir to long-held traditions of the Democratic Party, not a radical. In doing this, he invoked the name of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Sanders said initiated programs to...

The pleasantries, lack of handshake between Trump and Merkel notwithstanding, are officially over. One day after Trump returned to his favorite medium to slam Germany for abusing NATO's funding scheme, and US defense spending generosity, accusing Germany of owing "vast sums" of money to both NATO and the US, Germany has struck back. As a reminder, this is what Trump tweeted on Saturday morning: "Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more...

What does a real negotiator negotiate? Pretty much everything. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she came for tea and left having to commit to ponying up her overdue NATO dues. Trump told Merkel he supports a "strong NATO" but added that her country and other European nations must pay their "fair share" of the costs of the alliance. "Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States," Trump said in a joint news conference with Merkel after their meetings. "These nations must pay what they owe."Merkel said Germany is...