Well NATO was specifically bought about to counter the Soviet Union which no longer exists.
Current Russian forces are a shadow of their former selves and some of the Warsaw pact countries now belong to NATO, so it has bee a turn about.
The fact that Europe is reliant on the USA for some of its defense is to me some what draconian, NATO should be disbanded as we have a network of alliances in place inside Europe that if Russia for example wanted to step over the border it would be countered.
The Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) should be the successor to NATO, but then we have another issue, what do we do with Canada and the USA which are members of NATO but not part of European Union countries.
Well it is quite simple (in a way) make a separate alliance with them and also have them work along side us just like they do with NATO.
The thing that is going most wrong in NATO is the spending gaps, each nation made a pledge to commit 2% gdp to defense regardless of its GDP, now i understand it was a pledge and not an enforced limit but when you have countries like Canada (1.2% gdp defense budget) Spain (0.92% gdp) Germany (1.36% gdp)for example to are a lot wealthier than others that commit less percentage than poorer nations Greece (2.24%gdp) Estonia (2.13%gdp) and others that through creative accounting attain the 2% target UK (2.13% gdp) for example, i can see why it would upset the heavy spender USA (3.42% gdp).
Now the USA has a multitude of commitments as do many other countries but NATO is focused solely around defense of Europe, while the USA is split between Europe and the far east mainly with the rise of China.
NATO is currently shackling the USA to the European theater and as such it cant focus on more pressing matters, this means its now relying heavily on its allies in that region, The USA knows as does the EU Russia is not interested in coming across the border into the Baltics nor into Ukraine.
And Jointly the entire EU countries can counter the forces of Russia right now without assistance of the USA.
I think we need to re think our strategy and re-purpose NATO or get rid of it, this would also force the slack European countries to man up and man up their budgets accordingly, we also should court Russia instead of hindering her, after all what did the sanctions achieve? nothing the Russian economy continues to grow and the EU is still reliant on 25% of its LNG from Russia.
Source for NATO spending:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2...019-069-EN.pdf
Source for CDSP :
https://eeas.europa.eu/topics/common...policy-csdp_en