Turning 70 should be a special birthday to celebrate, but for the troubled NATO alliance this week, surviving the party in one piece will be seen as victory enough.

However fractious an anniversary summit it may have been in London, there were actually fewer bodies than expected left on the battlefield.

And if this means the challenge of figuring out NATOs new 21st-century-role will be left to another day, then that appears to be just fine.

After all, many western leaders, like most Americans, seem hopeful that a post-Trump world is on the horizon even though, more ominously, they fear that the Europe-U.S. relationship will never return to the way things were since 1949.

It was 70 years ago that NATO was founded to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Unions Joseph Stalin. But at the London summit, it sometimes appeared that much of NATO now sees Americas Donald Trump as its primary foe.

First, there was that clash between Frances Emmanuel Macron and Trump over the fate of Syrias ISIS fighters.

Then there was the scene at Buckingham Palace where several western leaders, including Canadas Justin Trudeau, appeared to mock the U.S. president.

And then in response to that, Trump abruptly cancelled his final news conference and dismissed Trudeau as being two-faced.

If this sounded like a typical week of global diplomacy in this Trump era, indeed it was although, as the title of a cherished British childrens book once put it, it could have been worse.

There have been increasing fears that Trumps hostility towards NATO will lead to the demise of the alliance, particularly if he is re-elected next year.

John Bolton, Trumps former national security adviser, warned in a private speech last month that Trump could go full isolationist if he is elected again, NBC News reported, pulling the U.S. out of NATO and other international alliances.

This seemed to confirm earlier reports in the New York Times that Trump discussed his desire to withdraw from NATO several times last year.

In spite of this, Trump was actually mildly supportive of NATO as an organization during the London meetings, even as he ranted against individual leaders for not spending enough on their military budgets.

Trumps comments about NATO were part of an attack on Frances president for being nasty and very insulting in recent remarks about the alliance. Emmanuel Macron had been quoted as saying that NATO was suffering brain death in what was widely regarded as criticism of Trumps handling of Turkey, Syria and the Kurds.

Incredibly, Trump responded by saying that NATO was serving a great purpose even though he had earlier ridiculed it for being obsolete. But his annoyance at Macron aside, there is no real evidence that Trump has become a fan of NATO.

Knowing that, Macron seemed determined to trigger a controversial debate inside NATO about the future of the organization, and its reliance on the U.S., in light of Trumps views.

In an interview last month with The Economist, which was criticized by Germanys Angela Merkel, Macron argued that Europe needs to rethink its defence posture in a world with an American president who doesnt share our idea of the European project.

Macron has recently been promoting a new European defence co-ordination project that doesnt include the United States and is separate from NATO.

Even though European leaders are deeply divided about whether any strategy that weakens the Europe-U.S. relationship is realistic, there seems to be a growing consensus that the genie is out of the bottle that, even after Trump, the extraordinary closeness and consistency of the past 70 years between Europe and the United States cannot be recaptured.

What has shocked many Europeans is that Trumps views have been embraced by so many Americans, particularly Republicans but others as well.

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In other words, even if Trump is defeated, how can the United States be trusted again?

As the impeachment process in Washington moves closer to the prospect of swallowing up Trump himself, the forces that led to his presidency will inevitably remain.

And that enduring reality will affect more than Europe.

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NATO survives to fight another day but will that fight be with Trump? - Toronto Star