Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a cornerstone of US foreign policy for decades, and called for the alliance's overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington.
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential front-runner Donald
Trump on Sunday (Mar 27) doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a
cornerstone of US foreign policy for decades, and called for the
alliance's overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington.
President Barack Obama will host the Nuclear Security Summit on
Thursday and Friday with 56 delegations in attendance. While preventing
nuclear terrorism will headline the discussions, Trump's views could be a
topic as well, particularly behind the scenes.In another sharp departure from historic US policy, Trump said in an interview published on Sunday by The New York Times that he would consider letting Japan and South Korea build their own nuclear weapons, rather than rely on America for protection against North Korea and China.
The billionaire businessman, vying to win his party's
nomination for the Nov 8 presidential election, also said he might halt
US purchases of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies unless they
commit ground troops to fight Islamic State or pay the United States to
do so.
"NATO is obsolete," Trump said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
The 28-country North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was set up
in a different era, Trump said, when the main threat to the West was
the Soviet Union. It is ill-suited to fighting terrorism and costs the
United States too much, he added.
"We should readjust NATO ... it can be trimmed up and it can
be, uh, it can be reconfigured and you can call it NATO, but it's going
to be changed," he said.
On Mar 21, Trump said the United States should slash its
financial support for NATO, which was formed in 1949 after World War Two
and became a bulwark against Soviet expansionism.
Russia will not attend the upcoming nuclear summit, but China's President Xi Jinping will.Obama said the United States will review international efforts to combat Islamic State militants during the summit in the wake of the Brussels attacks.
Trump's chief rival for the Republican nomination, Texas
Senator Ted Cruz called the real estate mogul's views on NATO
"catastrophically foolish." Speaking on Fox News Sunday with Chris
Wallace, Cruz said Trump is "out of his depth."
"Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from the most successful
military alliance of modern times, it makes no sense at all," Cruz said.
"It would hand a massive victory to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,
a massive victory to ISIS," the militant group also known as Islamic
State.
Cruz said if he were elected president, his approach to Islamic State would be to "carpet bomb them into oblivion."
- Reuters
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