His comments during the interview have been widely viewed as a sharp departure from US foreign policy.
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Article 5 of the 1949 treaty states that an attack on a single NATO ally will be viewed as an attack to all and will therefore be met with a collective response.
“TRUMP: Have they fulfilled their obligations to us?”
Trump said in the Times interview that he would review allies’ financial contributions – in this case, those from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – before acting under NATO’s mutual defence clause, if any of the countries were attacked by Russian Federation. Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign relations committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, contrasted Trump with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate.
The seasoned lawmaker also offered the expected paeans to NATO: The U.S. will fulfill its promise to defend the alliance’s members the way they’ve helped Washington go after the perpetrators of September 11; the group has a storied and successful history.
“If they fulfill their obligations to us”, he added, “the answer is yes”. It was consistent, however, with his previous threat to withdraw American forces from Europe and Asia if those allies fail to pay more for American protection.
The Foreign Secretary said USA secretary of state John Kerry had been encouraging about Britain’s new role. He reemphasized the hard-line nationalist approach that has marked his improbable candidacy, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defence costs that the United States has borne for decades, cancel longstanding treaties he views as unfavourable, and redefine what it means to be a partner of the US.
Trump’s statements were his strongest to date on the alliance’s future and they sent alarm rippling through Eastern Europe.
A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also noted that the alliance “deployed a third of the troops in Afghanistan for over a decade, where over one thousand soldiers from non-U.S. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies and partners gave their lives”. “We hope and expect that all our allies, big and small, take their commitments the same”. Trump’s threats will not encourage Europe to invest more in its alliance with the United States.
Back in the United States, criticism rained down from Trump’s fellow Republicans while others worked to smooth over Trump’s comments.
That would change if he’s elected, Trump told the New York Times.
Reaction in the USA was swift to Trump’s interview and broke down largely along party lines in the midst of a heated presidential election.
“Mr. Trump clearly doesn’t understand what the word “treaty” means, because a treaty means you have an obligation to those countries”, said Danielle Pletka, a senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
“Elites and elite projects of different kinds seem to be under attack”, said Ian Lesser of the German Marshal Fund of the United States.
“When Mr. Trump says he’ll only consider action, he is joining a long list of failed statesmen and leaders from decades ago, whose hesitancy, wavering, and lack of resolve”, Clark said in a statement.
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves tweeted that his country was one of the few to meet the minimum defense expenditure and noted pointedly that Estonia fought, with no caveats on behalf of the U.S.in Afghanistan.
And Lithuania’s president has reaffirmed her confidence in America when it comes to defending others.
People throughout Eastern Europe expressed deep concern. This he said while responding to a question about potential Russian aggression against the Baltic States. “I’m anxious about the world’s future, about Poland’s future”, said 39-year-old schoolteacher Lidia Zagorowska in Warsaw, Poland.
Even Trump’s allies in the Republican party balked at his stance.
Trump supporters succeeded in preventing a reference to arming Ukraine from getting into this years platform, but the manifesto itself is demonstrably not pro-Russia.
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“In fact, it accuses “current officials in the Kremlin” of eroding the “personal liberty and fundamental rights” of the Russian people”.
