France-Turkey spat over Libya arms exposes NATO’s limits

BRUSSELS (AP) — The naval standoff between France and Turkey is shining a spotlight on NATO’s struggle to keep its ranks in order and underscores the limits of an organization that must take decisions unanimously. It also reveals once more how difficult it is to run the world’s biggest military alliance and respect U.N. resolutions and arms embargoes when members are on different sides in a conflict, as in Libya. In normal times, the United States would use its weight to brings its partners into line. But President Donald Trump’s period of office, marked by troop pullouts and the U.S. withdrawal from a number of security agreements, has been anything but normal times for NATO.