Douglas Lute: Why NATO Allies Believe They Can't Rely On US Leadership

Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Douglas Lute, weighs in on foreign policy challenges confronting the Trump administration. He believes that NATO allies can no longer rely on US leadership because for the first time in 70 years, the US' commit to the alliance is in question. 

Ambassador Douglas Lute is the former United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s standing political body. Appointed by President Obama, he assumed the Brussels-based post in 2013 and served until 2017. During this period, he was instrumental in designing and implementing the 28-nation Alliance’s responses to the most severe security challenges in Europe since the end of the Cold War. For his service, he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. In 2017, he was appointed as Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Social Sciences, United State Military Academy, West Point, New York. Currently a Senior Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he is an expert on international relations and alliances as well as security and defense, foreign policy, and conflict in the Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. With an unique combination of experiences—military-political-diplomatic—inside the Pentagon, the White House and NATO Headquarters, Ambassador Lute discusses geopolitics, current events, and international relations, with a specific focus on the United States’ relations with allies and adversaries.