Trump Is Right About NATO Too

Most republican voters agree fully with Trump on immigration. It's such an important issue, the overriding issue really, that his gaffes on other issues do not concern us. If we don't get a handle on immigration, the other issues really won't matter because in a couple of years, we will be the United State of Mexifornia.

But another issue is very important, maybe more important. It concerns foreign affairs and our role in the world. Trump has caused fainting spells among the republican establishment with such heretical ideas as our allies should pony up the cost of defending them and why are we still supporting NATO when the threat it was created to counter is long gone?

We get the usual platitudes that "America must lead" and global security depends on us. But why? And why should we have to pay for the lion's share of it? Why does it matter to us which group of crooks and thugs rules some far-off country that we can't find on the map? The other candidates don't want to talk about these issues, even as they mock Trump's supposed foreign policy ignorance. The Big Thinkers in this case are a first term senator from Texas and some dork from the Midwest. Trump has done major deals all over the world with a multitude of different parties, yet he is the rube.

It's easy to understand the unease of the Establishment. The big defense contractors hire a lot of lobbyists and write a lot of checks. So we will be getting billion dollar manned aircraft that we don't need and couldn't responsibly risk in actual combat due to their cost. We will spend billions on ships that would be vaporized, along with their large crews, in the first 15 minutes of a war with a capable adversary like China or Russia. Generals and admirals always plan to fight the last war. Ours cannot even defeat a motley collection of opium farmers in Afghanistan. Of course, the farmers don't have to clear everything with Pentagon lawyers or worry about getting sent to prison for violating suicidal rule of engagement. We refuse to even name our enemy and in fact go to great lengths to say that we are not at war with it.

Other than defense contractors, there is a massive foreign policy establishment built up around the Atlantic Alliance, as well as all the trade deals that set up various tribunals staffed with international bureaucrats to undermine our sovereignty. Trumps' approach threatens all the cushy think tank jobs, the legions of consultants and lobbyists and lawyers and various rent seekers. But Cruz in outsider too, right? Uh no. His wife, whom he met while they worked on the Bush campaign, worked for Condi Rice and then was on the Council of Foreign Relations, which is pretty much the cathedral of the globalists. That was before she somehow landed a sweet gig with Goldman Sachs, in "investment management." Kind of remind you of Michele Obama's job at the U of Chicago Hospital?

So when Trump talks America First, he annoys and threatens a lot of very influential people. Why do you think he's the only one asking these questions? And why can't anyone answer them except to mock and attack him and then change the subject.
 
Is Trump Right About NATO?
Monday - March 28, 2016 at 8:12 pm




By Patrick Buchanan

I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told The New York times last weekend. “I like the expression.”

Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.”

Beltway media may be transfixed with Twitter wars over wives and alleged infidelities. But the ideas Trump aired should ignite a national debate over U.S. overseas commitments — especially NATO.

For the Donald’s ideas are not lacking for authoritative support.

The first NATO supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, said in February 1951 of the alliance: “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”

As JFK biographer Richard Reeves relates, President Eisenhower, a decade later, admonished the president-elect on NATO.

“Eisenhower told his successor it was time to start bringing the troops home from Europe. ‘America is carrying far more than her share of free world defense,’ he said. It was time for other nations of NATO to take on more of the costs of their own defense.”
No Cold War president followed Ike’s counsel.

But when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 nations, a new debate erupted.

The conservative coalition that had united in the Cold War fractured. Some of us argued that when the Russian troops went home from Europe, the American troops should come home from Europe.

Time for a populous prosperous Europe to start defending itself.

Instead, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush began handing out NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees, to all ex-Warsaw Pact nations and even Baltic republics that had been part of the Soviet Union.

In a historically provocative act, the U.S. moved its “red line” for war with Russia from the Elbe River in Germany to the Estonian-Russian border, a few miles from St. Petersburg.

We declared to the world that should Russia seek to restore its hegemony over any part of its old empire in Europe, she would be at war with the United States.

No Cold War president ever considered issuing a war guarantee of this magnitude, putting our homeland at risk of nuclear war, to defend Latvia and Estonia.

Recall. Ike did not intervene to save the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956. Lyndon Johnson did not lift a hand to save the Czechs, when Warsaw Pact armies crushed “Prague Spring” in 1968. Reagan refused to intervene when Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, on Moscow’s orders, smashed Solidarity in 1981.

These presidents put America first. All would have rejoiced in the liberation of Eastern Europe. But none would have committed us to war with a nuclear-armed nation like Russia to guarantee it.

Yet, here was George W. Bush declaring that any Russian move against Latvia or Estonia meant war with the United States. John McCain wanted to extend U.S. war guarantees to Georgia and Ukraine.

This was madness born of hubris. And among those who warned against moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch was America’s greatest geostrategist, the author of containment, George Kennan:

“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Kennan was proven right. By refusing to treat Russia as we treated other nations that repudiated Leninism, we created the Russia we feared, a rearming nation bristling with resentment.

The Russian people, having extended a hand in friendship and seen it slapped away, cheered the ouster of the accommodating Boris Yeltsin and the arrival of an autocratic strong man who would make Russia respected again. We ourselves prepared the path for Vladimir Putin.

While Trump is focusing on how America is bearing too much of the cost of defending Europe, it is the risks we are taking that are paramount, risks no Cold War president ever dared to take.

Why should America fight Russia over who rules in the Baltic States or Romania and Bulgaria? When did the sovereignty of these nations become interests so vital we would risk a military clash with Moscow that could escalate into nuclear war? Why are we still committed to fight for scores of nations on five continents?

Trump is challenging the mindset of a foreign policy elite whose thinking is frozen in a world that disappeared around 1991.

He is suggesting a new foreign policy where the United States is committed to war only when are attacked or U.S. vital interests are imperiled. And when we agree to defend other nations, they will bear a full share of the cost of their own defense. The era of the free rider is over.

Trump’s phrase, “America First!” has a nice ring to it.
 
Most republican voters agree fully with Trump on immigration. It's such an important issue, the overriding issue really, that his gaffes on other issues do not concern us. If we don't get a handle on immigration, the other issues really won't matter because in a couple of years, we will be the United State of Mexifornia.

But another issue is very important, maybe more important. It concerns foreign affairs and our role in the world. Trump has caused fainting spells among the republican establishment with such heretical ideas as our allies should pony up the cost of defending them and why are we still supporting NATO when the threat it was created to counter is long gone?

We get the usual platitudes that "America must lead" and global security depends on us. But why? And why should we have to pay for the lion's share of it? Why does it matter to us which group of crooks and thugs rules some far-off country that we can't find on the map? The other candidates don't want to talk about these issues, even as they mock Trump's supposed foreign policy ignorance. The Big Thinkers in this case are a first term senator from Texas and some dork from the Midwest. Trump has done major deals all over the world with a multitude of different parties, yet he is the rube.

It's easy to understand the unease of the Establishment. The big defense contractors hire a lot of lobbyists and write a lot of checks. So we will be getting billion dollar manned aircraft that we don't need and couldn't responsibly risk in actual combat due to their cost. We will spend billions on ships that would be vaporized, along with their large crews, in the first 15 minutes of a war with a capable adversary like China or Russia. Generals and admirals always plan to fight the last war. Ours cannot even defeat a motley collection of opium farmers in Afghanistan. Of course, the farmers don't have to clear everything with Pentagon lawyers or worry about getting sent to prison for violating suicidal rule of engagement. We refuse to even name our enemy and in fact go to great lengths to say that we are not at war with it.

Other than defense contractors, there is a massive foreign policy establishment built up around the Atlantic Alliance, as well as all the trade deals that set up various tribunals staffed with international bureaucrats to undermine our sovereignty. Trumps' approach threatens all the cushy think tank jobs, the legions of consultants and lobbyists and lawyers and various rent seekers. But Cruz in outsider too, right? Uh no. His wife, whom he met while they worked on the Bush campaign, worked for Condi Rice and then was on the Council of Foreign Relations, which is pretty much the cathedral of the globalists. That was before she somehow landed a sweet gig with Goldman Sachs, in "investment management." Kind of remind you of Michele Obama's job at the U of Chicago Hospital?

So when Trump talks America First, he annoys and threatens a lot of very influential people. Why do you think he's the only one asking these questions? And why can't anyone answer them except to mock and attack him and then change the subject.
Ann Coulter ‎@AnnCoulter
I don't care if @realDonaldTrump wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper. http://bit.ly/1EvT3Ja

10:36 AM - 16 Aug 2015
 
I'm so glad my wife is a Trump fan as well,but you do realize AAA the elite are gunning for him, metaphorically speaking of course. The elite don't lose often and I am unsure of what there reaction will be.
 
How come Pat is almost always correct. Do others not think as well or are they just dishonest with themselves on important issues.

Every thinking person in America knows that Europe should be paying for a much larger share of their own defense.

We also know this police the world policy is far too expensive and our politicians are not capable of doing it correctly and fairly often enough. And when its time to be really tough we stick our guys in hum vees and let them get blown up instead of doing it correctly.

Do it right or don't do it at all.


Is Trump Right About NATO?
Monday - March 28, 2016 at 8:12 pm




By Patrick Buchanan

I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told The New York times last weekend. “I like the expression.”

Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.”

Beltway media may be transfixed with Twitter wars over wives and alleged infidelities. But the ideas Trump aired should ignite a national debate over U.S. overseas commitments — especially NATO.

For the Donald’s ideas are not lacking for authoritative support.

The first NATO supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, said in February 1951 of the alliance: “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”

As JFK biographer Richard Reeves relates, President Eisenhower, a decade later, admonished the president-elect on NATO.

“Eisenhower told his successor it was time to start bringing the troops home from Europe. ‘America is carrying far more than her share of free world defense,’ he said. It was time for other nations of NATO to take on more of the costs of their own defense.”
No Cold War president followed Ike’s counsel.

But when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 nations, a new debate erupted.

The conservative coalition that had united in the Cold War fractured. Some of us argued that when the Russian troops went home from Europe, the American troops should come home from Europe.

Time for a populous prosperous Europe to start defending itself.

Instead, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush began handing out NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees, to all ex-Warsaw Pact nations and even Baltic republics that had been part of the Soviet Union.

In a historically provocative act, the U.S. moved its “red line” for war with Russia from the Elbe River in Germany to the Estonian-Russian border, a few miles from St. Petersburg.

We declared to the world that should Russia seek to restore its hegemony over any part of its old empire in Europe, she would be at war with the United States.

No Cold War president ever considered issuing a war guarantee of this magnitude, putting our homeland at risk of nuclear war, to defend Latvia and Estonia.

Recall. Ike did not intervene to save the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956. Lyndon Johnson did not lift a hand to save the Czechs, when Warsaw Pact armies crushed “Prague Spring” in 1968. Reagan refused to intervene when Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, on Moscow’s orders, smashed Solidarity in 1981.

These presidents put America first. All would have rejoiced in the liberation of Eastern Europe. But none would have committed us to war with a nuclear-armed nation like Russia to guarantee it.

Yet, here was George W. Bush declaring that any Russian move against Latvia or Estonia meant war with the United States. John McCain wanted to extend U.S. war guarantees to Georgia and Ukraine.

This was madness born of hubris. And among those who warned against moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch was America’s greatest geostrategist, the author of containment, George Kennan:

“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Kennan was proven right. By refusing to treat Russia as we treated other nations that repudiated Leninism, we created the Russia we feared, a rearming nation bristling with resentment.

The Russian people, having extended a hand in friendship and seen it slapped away, cheered the ouster of the accommodating Boris Yeltsin and the arrival of an autocratic strong man who would make Russia respected again. We ourselves prepared the path for Vladimir Putin.

While Trump is focusing on how America is bearing too much of the cost of defending Europe, it is the risks we are taking that are paramount, risks no Cold War president ever dared to take.

Why should America fight Russia over who rules in the Baltic States or Romania and Bulgaria? When did the sovereignty of these nations become interests so vital we would risk a military clash with Moscow that could escalate into nuclear war? Why are we still committed to fight for scores of nations on five continents?

Trump is challenging the mindset of a foreign policy elite whose thinking is frozen in a world that disappeared around 1991.

He is suggesting a new foreign policy where the United States is committed to war only when are attacked or U.S. vital interests are imperiled. And when we agree to defend other nations, they will bear a full share of the cost of their own defense. The era of the free rider is over.

Trump’s phrase, “America First!” has a nice ring to it.
 
Trump has some good ideas, but then he "expands" on his thoughts and becomes more of a loose cannon. The guy really just needs to learn how to turn it off after he makes the first pitch. The more he talks the more people start to scratch their heads and ask, is this really who we want? He may have already peaked in interested parties. That's not a good thing looking out 3 months.
I can't believe these guys still allow themselves to be tripped up over these gotcha abortion questions. They know that the media will beat this drum to death while ignoring all other policy questions and answers.
 
Captain, that is the downside of rookie candidates. It's multiplied when they are taking unPC stands and have the media gunning for them. I agree with you. Any republican candidate should be able to handle a few abortion questions from an asshole like Chris Matthews without getting tied in knots. Or an asshole like Anderson Cooper.

End of the day however, it means nothing. It's Trump or Bush ver.3.0 or Obama II.
 
if not USA then who? Russia? China? Balance of power. Everybody back then felt just like we do today, but cooler heads figured it was cheaper to spend money than fight wars.
 
The threat to Europe has nothing to do with Russia.

Anyway, no one is saying disarm. The question is who pays for it. If Europe isn't willing to fund their own defense, why should we? Same with Japan and the rest of asia.

The other question is why are we obligating ourselves to go to war with Russia or China over countries that are not in our vital interests? Turkey's reckless shootdown of a Russian fighter could have resulted in us being obliged under Nato to go to their defense. Why would we let a repressive islamofacist dictator in Turkey drag us into war with a nuclear-armed russia? WW I and WW II were both arguably set in motion because small countries were emboldened by defense treaties with larger countries.
 
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