When Trump left early to celebrate NATO's 70th anniversary, many feared that the US was trying to withdraw from the world's largest military alliance.

US President Donald Trump canceled a press conference on December 4 and boarded a plane to leave London for Washington earlier than expected, after two days meeting with NATO leaders to celebrate the bloc's 70th birthday.

The two days of the summit exposed NATO uncertainty over a series of questions, such as whether their main task was to counter threats from Russia, Iran and China, or should they restructure their strategy to deal with new cyber threats and information anarchy.

In addition, the internal NATO division is also evident, from Turkey's role in the bloc to the question of whether Europe needs to build its own defenses in parallel or compete with NATO.

President Trump continues to warn NATO member states that while Washington has spent $ 130 billion on the bloc since 2016, it has to do more to share the burden.

Whenever he mentioned NATO's strategy, Trump mentioned the issue of cost, setting aside NATO policies to contain Russia. Others were haunted by comments from French President Emmanuel Macron a few weeks ago that NATO "was going through a brain-dead process". Macron insists that he has not changed his position on the statement, though Trump accused him of insulting the alliance.

For many, Macron was right. According to them, what the French President wants to mention is the situation that Washington is gradually "letting go" with NATO.

"The biggest challenge lies in the lack of leadership from the US president," said Douglas Lute, a retired US military general who served as US ambassador to NATO. This situation is unprecedented in NATO history and could hinder every process of handling challenges, Lute said.

During a recent NATO conference, Trump reduced his criticism. The US president said that although he was right to say that NATO was "obsolete", the coalition has recently been reviving thanks to his efforts to urge other countries to spend more on defense.

President Macron countered, shifting the topic to the threats that NATO faced. This is a topic that Trump doesn't seem to be prepared for, and his embarrassing response only reinforces the critics' opinion that the US president has spent too much time thinking about cutting the alliance's costs. but forget about the threats NATO needs to address.

According to Jeremy Shapiro, a former US official who works at the European Council on Foreign Relations, some leaders believe that NATO can get rid of the new disagreements that arise because the alliance has survived many crises. before. However, Shapiro contends that the current problems are real.

Shapiro judged Macron "it was not unreasonable to see Trump turning his back on Europe and want NATO members, along with Europe, to awaken to this fact."

On December 3, Trump again avoided making a clear commitment to NATO's core belief in collective defense when asked directly whether the United States would support allies if they were attacked. . Instead, Trump spoke of military spending, still consistent with the false idea that members who haven't spent 2% of their GDP on military "owe" US dollars.

President Trump loves his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two yesterday met not on the White House boss's public agenda. But Ankara refused to give up the Russian-supplied S-400 air defense missile system, a threat to new generation US aircraft, and expressed that it wanted to shake hands with both sides.

Turkey is an important member of NATO, bordering on Syria and within Russia's missile range, the reason the US still holds nuclear weapons at Turkey's Incirlik air base. Everyone acknowledges that keeping Turkey fully committed to NATO is increasingly difficult, except for President Trump.

The French president at the conference also challenged Turkey's definition of terrorism. Ankara considers the Kurdish forces on the Syrian border to be terrorists despite their fight against the Islamic State (IS) by the US, France and other NATO members. He questioned how long Turkey could "play for both sides". President Trump refused to answer.

"Turkey is slowly becoming a challenge for NATO," said Amanda Sloat, a former US official working at the Brookings Institution. According to her, Turkey has a strategic geographical position, has the second largest military base of the alliance, contains more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees and has legitimate security concerns.

At the same time, NATO members are skeptical of Turkey's commitment. However, Sloat noted that NATO had no mechanism to remove Turkey from the bloc and never wanted to push Ankara away from the West to get closer to Moscow.

This meeting is the first time that NATO leaders have acknowledged the direct threats from China's rise.

For the first time, the Chinese navy has a notable presence in the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and Northern European sea routes. Beijing is laying undersea cables, which means that many NATO countries will now communicate via China's telecommunications infrastructure. These platforms will pave the way for applications of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, two areas in which China invests heavily, often through cooperation with European universities.

But the immediate problem stems from the drastic efforts of Chinese telecommunications group Huawei to build 5G networks in NATO countries, from Italy to Germany and Britain. Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned European countries that if they bought products from Huawei, the United States could end their access to intelligence.

The reaction against the ultimatum Pompeo was so strong that he later tried to appease his ally. Some European countries argue that they can "manage well" China 's presence in its telecommunications network. This appears to be part of an effort to avoid making Beijing angry, otherwise it will retaliate by cutting imports from Europe.

Inside NATO, however, officials are trying to figure out what would happen if their daily communications passed through China's switching network and mobile network, a loophole that Beijing could Tap if conflict breaks out.

French President Emmanuel Macron is seeing a leadership gap within Europe that he wants to fill. Angered over Trump's unpredictability and seeing him as a sign that a United States is far from Europe, Macron is pushing for the idea of a Europe with greater "strategic autonomy", including the possibility of self-defense.

But many NATO countries, including Germany, Poland or the Baltic States and Central Europe, fear that Europe cannot contain Russia without the United States and its nuclear umbrella.

They also doubt Macron's claim that it is not Russia or China that terrorism is the main threat to NATO.

"If we want to build peace in Europe, re-establish Europe's strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia," President Macron said in an interview. there he said NATO was "brain dead".

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz even likens France to the "Russian Trojan horse".

Regarding Europe's strategic autonomy, very few people believe that Europeans will dare to spend big enough money to become reliable. Some argue that France is not even as reliable as the United States in protecting small NATO members like Montenegro or Estonia.

James Dobbins, a former White House official who now works with Research and Development (RAND), US lawmakers should not be too worried. "Experience has shown that such initiatives are unlikely to go far," he said. "But more importantly, if these efforts are successful, that is a good thing, not a bad thing, for the US. The United States welcomes a more balanced relationship than Europe."