Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

“Designed many years ago, NATO is obsolete”, said Donald Trump in January 2017. Yet in August 2017, he said the US would be very protective of the Baltic region. In the US. National Security Strategy published in December 2017, the Trump administration said it would abide by “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. This article aims to analyze the US security policy during the Trump presidency, with a particular focus on military security and NATO’s role in it, and to assess its significance for the Baltic States. What are the guiding principles of Trump’s military security policy? What is NATO’s role in the Trump administration’s security policy? Is the administration’s policy regarding NATO coherent? Has the Trump administration’s military security policy changed compared to traditional US military security policy? Does the Trump administration plan to maintain its commitment to defend the Baltic States? What does Trump’s military security policy mean to the Baltic States? Based on the original study, the article discusses official positions of US officials (the President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense) expressed in strategic documents and political discourse, also analyzing initiatives taken by the administration based on compiled event data sets.