North Atlantic Treaty Organization

After repeatedly calling NATO 'obsolete' during the 2016 campaign cycle, President Trump will be joined shortly by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for their first joint press briefing.  Trump is expected to discuss America’s "100% commitment" to the alliance but is also expected to reiterate his calls for all NATO member states to increase military spending to 2% of their economic output to strengthen the alliance’s long-term capabilities and reduce the economic burdens on the Unites States.  The Express reported earlier on comments made by a White House official regarding today's m

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to reassure America's nervous European counterparts over Washington's commitment to NATO on Friday but it didn't quite work out as expected when he pressed them again to spend more on defense, triggering a sharp rebuke from Germany.

“As President Trump has made clear, it is no longer sustainable for the U.S. to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defense expenditures,” Tillerson said at a meeting of allied foreign ministers in Brussels.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote several notes about German Chancellor Angela Merkel's painfully awkward visit to the White House.  After meeting in private, the pair sat down in the oval office for a brief press conference where you could cut the tension with a knife.  At one point someone from the media asked for a handshake but the request was promptly ignored.

"Can we get a handshake?"

*Merkel looks at Trump*

*Trump grins*

Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Russia has warned Norway over consequences of joining NATO ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans. According to Russian ambassador to Oslo, Moscow will retaliate. Norway's possible accession to NATO's missile shield «will be a new factor that will be considered in our strategic planning as the emergence of an additional problem in the Arctic region», Teimuraz Ramishvili told the Norwegian state media network NRK.

Yesterday, just hours after James Comey's hearing on Russian interference in the US election (which provided zero proof, but countless innuendo and extrapolations), we reported that Rex Tillerson planned to skip the April 5-6 meeting of NATO foreign ministers in order to be present at Mar-A-Lago during the first US visit by China's president, and one week later travel to Russia, which as Reuters said is "a step allies may see as putting Moscow's concerns ahead of theirs", or in other words - an intentional snub.