Posted on 01/18/2017 12:16:34 PM PST by Lorianne
In an interview with the Times of London published Monday, President-elect Donald Trump called the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance “obsolete,” sparking alarm among other NATO members. The comments were especially worrisome to many in the West given the intense scrutiny of Trump’s ties to Russia —both substantiated and unsubstantiated.
The Times interview marked yet another instance of Trump’s veering away from decades of nearly unconditional U.S. support for its allies in the pact—namely, Canada and most of Europe, including his current wife’s country of Slovenia, formerly part of the Soviet state Yugoslavia.
On the campaign trail in July, Trump told the New York Times that he would not fulfill obligations outlined in Article 5 of the treaty creating NATO, which stipulates that “if a NATO ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions is deems necessary to assist the ally attacked.” The article has been invoked only once in the treaty’s more than half-century history, following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.
“We have NATO members that aren’t paying their bills,” Trump told the New York Times’ David Sanger in July. “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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.com ...
Get NATO out of New York!!!
Preach it brother Trump
Is NATO in NY?
Oops! Sorry! The UN headquarters was in my head.
UN AND NATO are obsolete.
We know that. The UN is another failure to replace the League of Nations.
The combined wealth of the 27 other members exceeds that of the US and they have no technology deficit.
If they will not protect themselves against terrorists or foreign armies, there is nothing we can do to help them. Especially at the risk of existential war.
When combined with the enormous costs to US taxpayers and the lack of benefit to our citizens, abandoning NATO is a no-brainer.
I would give them no more than 5 years notice, 3 preferred.
Besides, would you send your child or grandchild to fight a foreign army invading Bulgaria? How about Latvia, Romania or Slovenia?
Would you sacrifice an American city for them? How about 100 cities?
NATO’s mission ended with the Cold War ending in 1991. It has staggered along with no real purpose the last 25 yrs. If it is to continue a new mission and purpose must be decided upon, a purpose that must be in the USA’s national interest.
All the western European countries have lived off our defense spending for 70 yrs. and wasted all their resources on social programs. Time to pay up Europe or be turned to slaves in Eurabia.
And it was after 1991 that NATO expanded into places where there was absolutely no US interests.
None.
That's not Trump's position.
Trump says that NATO is important to him.
He wants NATO to fight terrorism. He wants NATO countries to stop legal immigration. Short of doing both of those two things, he says that NATO would become obsolete.
He also wants all countries to pay their fair share.
correction-> He wants to stop illegal immigration.
NATO was good for something up to 1991. It should have been dissolved in an orderly fashion in the year or so following that.
The UN was always a bad bad bad idea.
I didn’t say it was Trump’s position.
I didn’t say that you did. I was pointing out Trump’s position.
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