He went further in the latest interview, however. “If they fulfill their obligation to us, the answer is yes”.
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“We’re talking about countries that are doing very well”, he said.
Regarding the situation in Turkey, where government forces squashed an attempted military coup last weekend, Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But he said that would only be possible if USA allies stop taking advantage of Washington’s generosity to always foot the bill, which he said the country can no longer afford.
Stoltenberg: I relate to what the US has actually done.
His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, worked for many years in Ukraine on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014.
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander who has been rumored to be a potential vice presidential choice for Hillary Clinton, tweeted that Trump’s NATO comments would bring “great cheer in the Kremlin”. But he left it unclear whether his father might break treaty commitments to allies that fail to pay their share for defense.
Also weighing in was the campaign for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Trump’s likely opponent in the November 8 election. He suggested Trump has “a freakish and occasionally obsequious fascination with Russia’s strongman”.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was more forgiving.
This drew a furious response from Estonia and Latvia, and outrage from Trump’s domestic political critics.
Some ended their public silence Thursday, however.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he would “not interfere in the US election campaign, but what I can do is say what matters for NATO”.
In defending NATO, Ilves points to a long history of collaboration between North America and Europe, including the role the USA played in the fall of the Soviet Union – an event that restored independence to the Baltic states.
The president of Estonia, one of NATO’s newest allies, tweeted: “We are equally committed to [all] our North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies, regardless of who they may be”.
Trump spoke about his “America First” foreign policy approach with the Times, underscoring his plans to make the US stronger by, for example, forcing allies to pay for their own defences instead of the USA footing much of the bill.
If we want to win the war against what Trump calls radical Islamic terrorism, we need the help of our allies – sharing intelligence and providing troops to fight on the ground. One of its key provisions is that an attack on one member nation would be an attack on all of them. He pointed out on Twitter that Estonia is one of just five European countries to fulfill NATO’s target that nations spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. But maybe that’s how a Manchurian candidate really wins an election, and maybe that’s how an era of US global influence comes to an end: not with a bang but a shrug and a whimper. “We hope and expect that all our allies, big and small, take their commitments the same”.
Unless NATO could prove itself, Gates warned, a new generation of Americans and political leaders who grew up after its Cold War heyday would begin to seriously question whether the US should preserve its commitment to the alliance.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he might abandon NATO’s guarantee of mutual defense and would renegotiate or scrap the NAFTA trade deal if he is elected, drawing fire from some senior Republicans and his Democratic rival.
