Originally Posted by
henra
The problem with that is that deterrence depends on credibility. As soon as Captain Orange comes into Office and seeds serious doubts about his willingness to press the button (and I repeat: his putting of pressure on NATO members to pay their dues is fully OK for me but he conveys a different message - 2% or not I generally don't give sh*t about you being taken over by Russia), deterrence is immediately gone.
As a European I'm absolutely not keen on totally depending on France (I understood and fully share your view on how France would take this). But if the choice is France or nothing, France suddenly looks like a brilliant idea.
I am pretty sure that if Mr Trump makes a move to back out of NATO, he'll be in for a long, drawn out fight with his own Congress. Not sure how long that would take, nor how it would turn out.
If the US were going to leave NATO, the time to dissolve the alliance was in about 1993, before NATO decided to
(1) do out of area operations, beginning with former Yugoslavia
(2) get bigger and more unwieldy.
The decision for NATO to keep on going, and to eventually keep on growing was (IMO at the time) an application of the sunk cost fallacy.
But as it turns out, that's what the 16 nations all decided to do together, so here we are.