NATO allies respond to Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. might not protect them from Russia

Many wanted to make a big deal over this and he put it to bed an a few sentences last night. They need to fulfill their obligations and stop being welfare nations with the American taxpayer paying their bills.

... and you didn’t ever see Hillary’s lips move. Come-on Europe! Gravy train is over. It should have ended in 1989.

OP is a bootlicking Putinist. Just sowing a little division here.

Russia already attacked Europe and murdered over 10000 people in Ukraine. They also periodically threaten nuclear war.e

What the euro bedwetters are really worried about is the pinkos running Germany will ally with Putinist russia instead of the US. We’ve seen that novie before. It has a bad ending

Good of you to post this piece, but it needed some "Fisking".

On a previous thread kabar posted the actual interview.

I post a copy of the pertinent part below:

SANGER: I was just in the Baltic States. They are very concerned obviously about this new Russian activism, they are seeing submarines off their coasts, they are seeing airplanes they haven’t seen since the Cold War coming, bombers doing test runs. If Russia came over the border into Estonia or Latvia, Lithuania, places that Americans don’t think about all that often, would you come to their immediate military aid?

TRUMP: I don’t want to tell you what I’d do because I don’t want Putin to know what I’d do. I have a serious chance of becoming president and I’m not like Obama, that every time they send some troops into Iraq or anyplace else, he has a news conference to announce it.

SANGER: They are NATO members, and we are treaty-obligated ——

TRUMP: We have many NATO members that aren’t paying their bills.

SANGER: That’s true, but we are treaty-obligated under NATO, forget the bills part.

TRUMP: You can’t forget the bills. 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.

SANGER: My point here is, Can the members of NATO, including the new members in the Baltics, count on the United States to come to their military aid if they were attacked by Russia? And count on us fulfilling our obligations ——

TRUMP: Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.

HABERMAN: And if not?

TRUMP: Well, I’m not saying if not. I’m saying, right now there are many countries that have not fulfilled their obligations to us.

So, what do we learn from this?

#1: It was not Trump who highlighted the Baltic countries. It was the journalists who used them as prime examples.

#2: Trump did not say that the US would not support the Baltic (or other) countries. He did say the US would do so if they had fulfilled their part of the treaty.

#3; He did not say that US would not come to the assistance of countries that had not fulfilled the NATO treaty. However, he refused to divulge his hand, both to those NATO countries and their prospective enemy/enemies.

Once again the MSM refuses to act responsibly and discuss grown up matters in a grown up fashion. There are people who know this and act accordingly.

In the same thread I posted a YouTube clip of an interview with Donald Rumsfeld.

A transcription of the pertinent exchange between DR and Greta van S. follows:

GvS: What about the fact that Donald Trump has ruffled the feathers of some of our allies? Prime Minister Cameron has said a few things. Does that unnerve you a little bit as you make your selection?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I just spent eight days in the Caucasus and the Central Asia area and talked to a lot of people from other countries. They know I am a former ambassador to NATO. and they knew what Mr Trump is reported to have said about NATO. I had a staff person go back and tell me precisely what he DID say about NATO, and then I compared it with what the media and his opponents is saying he said about NATO, and there is a difference.

And I laughed, because back in 2003, or 2004, or 05 I sent President Bush - it is on rumsfeld.com, my website - a memo, saying that NATO and all these institutions that were created back in the Truman era: [?], NATO, Dept of Defense, CIA, National Security Council, they all need to be updated. They were created at the end of WWII, at the beginning of the Cold War. We ended the Cold War and moved in to the information age and the 21st century, and they have not been looked at to be brought up to date, to deal with threats, issues and needs that exist today.... [SNIP] The other thing is he said about NATO is that the Western European allies are not spending enough on defence. Well, that happens to be true.
-------------------------------------------------------

So, a few things to bring back home:

NEVER TRUST THE MEDIA.

THANK GOD FOR FREEREPUBLIC - there is always someone who has taken the trouble to go back to the original source and post about it.

TIME TO MAKE A DONATION TO FR TO KEEP THE SITE GOING!

Bookmark.

ScaniaBoy, thanks for this post. Good, succinct information.

Sorry, my first link was went to the wrong thread. Here is the correct one:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3451471/posts?page=42#42

We aren’t going to be going to war with Russia-not in the age of nuclear weapons which we also periodically threaten to use. The fact is, any war between superpowers is going to end in nuclear war. Mutually Assured Destruction is as real now as it was during the cold war. There are other ways to deal with Russia that don’t involve mutually assured destruction and that is what we are presently involved in.