NATO is full of freeloaders

It's Trump, not Macron, who once called NATO "obsolete," just as it's Trump who has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the US would defend NATO states from an attack

With the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s 70th anniversary summit in London, it’s fair to say that Donald Trump thinks that most alliance members, starting with France and Canada, are a bunch of ungrateful and unhelpful freeloaders. Fair to say, also, that most of those members see Trump as an erratic, pompous, dangerous simpleton.

There’s no reason they both can’t be right.

The tone of the summit was set several weeks ago, when Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to The Economist, warning of the “brain death” of NATO and wondering whether the alliance’s mutual defense commitments still meant anything.