At nearly the exact same time on Wednesday evening that Mike Pence declared to Republican voters that Donald Trump will “stand with our allies”, the New York Times published a recent interview with the GOP nominee in which he indicated that, as president, he would not necessarily abide by America’s treaty obligations should a member of NATO come under attack.
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But when Trump was asked in the Times interview whether small Baltic nations and other NATO allies could count on the USA to stand by its treaty obligations to defend them if Russian Federation attacks, Trump responded: “Have they fulfilled their obligations to us?”
“There is a big difference between challenging our European allies to keep up their defense spending, particularly at a time when Russia’s been more aggressive, and saying to them, ‘You know what?”
Obama tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Trump’s comments amount to an admission that the U.S.
“SANGER: My point here is, Can the members of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, including the new members in the Baltics, count on the United States to come to their military aid if they were attacked by Russian Federation?”
Trump has railed against the NAFTA trade deal with Canada and Mexico as a USA job killer and was quoted as saying in the New York Times interview that he would be prepared to scrap it if he could not negotiate much better terms for the United States.
Back in the United States, criticism, including some from Trump’s fellow Republicans, was blistering.
“It’s the end of NATO”, Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to the alliance under President Bill Clinton, told Reuters. “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is ‘yes, ‘” Trump said. Bloomberg News reports: “Trump’s remarks are ‘both risky and irresponsible, ‘ Ojars Kalnins, who chairs the foreign affairs committee in Latvia’s parliament, said in an interview with Latvian radio Thursday”.
Asked if Mr Trump had made a gaffe with his comments, Mr Johnson said: “It’s not for me to get involved in the politics of this election campaign going on in America”.
“The NATO treaty says that if one member of the alliance is attacked then it is an attack on all of the alliance”, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves says.
TRUMP: Have they fulfilled their obligations to us?
Trump has repeatedly indicated that the United States might not come to the defense of a NATO ally – a treaty obligation – if they were not pulling their weight.
In an interview published Thursday in the New York Times, Trump called this vow into question. The position will exacerbate concerns by GCC leaders who already feel the USA is more ambiguous than ever before about its commitments to them.
Speaking to media, Mr Trump said the U.S. would only come to the aid of allies if they have “fulfilled their obligations to us”. The provision essentially states that an attack on a member nation would insight immediate response from all member nations. We defend one another.
The reaction of Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite was one of disbelief that any US president would shirk treaty obligations.
Even Trump’s allies in the Republican party balked at his stance.
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance of European and North American democracies created after World War II to strengthen worldwide cooperation as a counter-balance to the rise of the Soviet Union. It was a major force in the Cold War, and more recently provided the USA with military support for the war in Afghanistan.
Conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin: Trump “simultaneously denigrated the United States…, demonstrated his jaw-dropping ignorance and fueled concerns that there is some fishy connection between the Trump team and Russian President Vladimir Putin”.
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Donald Trump may not be a youth favorite, but on foreign policy he might just be speaking their language.
