Trump has long railed against European freeloaders, but the claim at a weekend campaign rally in South Carolina was provocative even by his standards.
Former president Donald Trump’s claim that he would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies if they failed to spend enough on their defense pact set off fresh tremors Sunday across Washington and in European countries already worried about America’s reliability as an ally in a potential second Trump administration.
A Trump campaign official dismissed the backlash over the remarks from critics he termed “Democrat and media pearl-clutchers.” John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and a now a vocal critic of his former boss, said Trump did, in fact, press NATO partners aggressively to increase military spending — an objective sought by multiple administrations over the past decades. “But he didn’t say anything about not defending anybody against Russia,” Bolton said in an interview.
Still, American policymakers and experts have warned that Biden’s embrace of European allies masks a broader trend of increasing U.S. frustration with its central role undergirding Europe’s defense. Biden and Trump are among a dwindling generation of American leaders who matured during the Cold War, with younger leaders on both sides of the aisle less shaped by the legacy of rebuilding Europe after World War II and competition with the Soviet Union.
Some policymakers from NATO countries that border Russia, accustomed to four years of Trump’s sniping at the alliance, said they weren’t immediately unnerved by his latest comments. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was recently in Washington on a visit that including meetings with U.S. conservatives, said the alliance “remains ready and able to defend all Allies. Any attack on NATO will be met with a united and forceful response.”
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Trump Says He Might 'Encourage' Russia To Attack NATO AlliesSara Boboltz is a reporter for HuffPost based in New York City. She can be reached at sara.boboltzhuffingtonpost.com.
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Trump says he'd let Russia attack NATO countries that don't pay enoughRudy Chinchilla is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital.
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Trump says he wouldn't defend NATO allies from Russia if they're 'delinquent'The Republican front-runner said that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he 'would encourage' Russia 'to do whatever the hell they want' to countries that don't meet their spending commitments.
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