By Michael McFaul in Stanford In an interview with the New York Times in the summer of 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump characterized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a protection racket in which members pay their dues and then we – the United States – provide their security. It was such an inaccurate, ill-informed description of how NATO operates and why NATO is valuable to American national interests that I felt compelled to write a response in an op-ed in the Washington Post on July 25, 2016, called “Mr. Trump, NATO is an alliance, not a protection racket.” In this …