How Trumps NATO ambassador pick may bring pressure tactics to alliance – National [Video]

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of his former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO likely signals a confrontational and “bullying” approach toward the military alliance he has long railed against, analysts say.

That could present both vulnerabilities and opportunities for Canada, which has been under increased pressure to meet its defence spending commitments, those experts add. That pressure is expected to build further under a new Trump administration, whose representative to NATO is a relative newcomer to the diplomatic scene fully aligned with his president’s worldview.

“Appointing a loyalist with limited foreign policy experience and expertise might signal an intention (by Trump) to keep pushing his more confrontational and unilateral agenda,” Erika Simpson, an associate professor of international relations at Western University, told Global News in an email.

If Whitaker is confirmed, Simpson said he may bring “more hardline rhetoric, pressure tactics, America First tactics that strain the alliance’s norms of consensus and cooperation.”