In a wide-ranging interview with the Times of London, Donald Trump said he would be inclined to drop sanctions imposed on Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea in exchange for a nuclear arms deal. And while it was at it, he called America’s NATO alliance “obsolete.”
On the issue of Russia, Trump told the Times:
“They have sanctions on Russia – let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia.
“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”
The most notable person to benefit from the lifting of sanctions, Trump neglected to mention, would be Russian President/mass murderer Vladimir Putin.
As for NATO, Trump doubled down on comments he made on the campaign trail that the world’s oldest military alliance had outlived its usefulness:
“I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete. It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.
“A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States. With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”
When asked about the prospects of peace in the Middle East, Trump said he would appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as a broker for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Clearly, Donald Trump has no idea how to solve any problem which confronts the United States on an international level. But it’s interesting to note that both the lifting of sanctions on Russia and weakening of NATO would serve to strengthen Putin and Russia. Can there be any doubt remaining that Trump is indeed beholden to Putin for his victory last November?
Featured Image Via Gage Skidmore for Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License
