Trump stance on NATO, departure from American foreign policy

[gpatt0n]

Talk about rocking the apple cart, Trump's ignorant statements about the US not fulfilling its commitments to defend our NATO allies in Europe from Russia, not to mention his move to remove our support of Ukraine from the GOP platform, is, in terms of magnitude, idiocy to the eighth power.

 

So idiotic, you can expect the Clinton campaign to paint Trump as the ally of Putin, maybe even his agent.

 

Stories like this: It's Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin

 

and this:  Donald Trump Remarks on NATO Trigger Alarm Bells in Europe

 

From NBC News:

 

 

LONDON — Donald Trump set off alarm bells in European capitals Thursday after suggesting he might not honor the core tenet of the NATO military alliance.

 

Trump said the U.S. would not necessarily defend new NATO members in the Baltics in the event of Russian attack if he were elected to the White House.

 

He told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday that doing so would depend on whether those countries had "fulfilled their obligations to us" in terms of their financial contributions to the alliance.

 

"You can't forget the bills," Trump told the paper. "They have an obligation to make payments. Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they're supposed to make. That's a big thing. You can't say forget that."

 

Trump's comments were perceived by some analysts as carte blanche for Russia to intimidate NATO allies and a potential harbinger of the alliance's collapse were Trump to be elected.

 

These bits are from the NYTimes article that broke the news (emphasis mine).

 

 

“Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general and a former prime minister of Norway, said in a statement. He said he did not wish to “interfere” with the American election, but added: “Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States.”

 

The United States created the 28-nation alliance, and Article 5 of the NATO treaty, signed by President Truman, requires any member to come to the aid of another that NATO declares was attacked. It has been invoked only once: NATO pledged to defend the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 

That commitment has long been considered a central element of deterring attacks in Europe, especially against smaller and weaker nations like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which joined after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

 

Then there is this: Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine

 

From the Washington Post:

 

 

The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.

 

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

 

Yep, it begs the question posed by this headline:

Is Donald Trump Working for Russia?

From NY magazine:

 

Donald Trump is not a Russian agent in the sense that Philip and Elizabeth from The Americans are Russian agents. There’s no hidden radio in his laundry room where he transmits secrets to the Kremlin. But his relationship with Russia is disturbing and lends itself to frightening interpretations.

 

Franklin Foer has detailed the connections between the Republican nominee and the Kremlin. In short, it includes a long series of economic and social ties, which fit the pattern Vladimir Putin has used to infiltrate and undermine governments elsewhere — including in Ukraine, a coup Putin pulled off through Paul Manafort, who is now Trump’s campaign manager.

 

Michael Crowley and Julia Ioffe have both described how the Russian propaganda apparatus has thrown itself behind Trump’s campaign. As Foer notes, Trump’s lack of creditworthiness makes him unusually reliant on unconventional sources of financing. This makes him vulnerable to financial leverage by an unscrupulous foreign entity.

 

The evidence of Trump’s unseemly affinity for Putin is extensive but circumstantial. Yet the most disturbing explanation for the evidence continues to get more plausible. Today, Josh Rogin reports, the Republican Party officially altered its platform on Ukraine and Russia. The previous platform advocated “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine, reflecting the virtually unanimous position of the Republican Party Establishment. Trump staffers prevailed on the Platform Committee to replace that language with a milder endorsement of “appropriate assistance.”

 

Given how little attention Trump has paid to the substance of the platform, the intervention is striking.  At the very least, it suggests that the candidate’s extensive, fulsome praise for the Russian dictator is more than a passing fancy. Reporters who investigate these ties are being very careful about their conclusions, but this looks really bad.

 

Hey,  this is really scary.

 

 

pubby

 

[gpatt0n]

Let me add another link to this disturbing story; this one from the Washington Post.

 

pubby