The US president hinted at leaving the military alliance as he wages war on Iran with little support from allies
After years of attacking its efficacy and assailing its members as spendthrift freeloaders, Donald Trump now appears on the very threshold of doing the once unthinkable: withdrawing the US from Nato.
Such a move would signal a political earthquake for the western security architecture established in the aftermath of the second world war and which endured cold war confrontation with the Soviet Union before expanding after the demise of eastern European communism in 1989.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the alliance’s formal name, was set up in 1949 with an initial core of 12 members – including the US, Britain, France, Canada and Denmark – and has since expanded to include 32 countries.
Its initial purpose was to provide a bulwark against Soviet communism, then deemed to be aggressively expansionist.
