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This week, Trump travels to Brussels for a NATO summit and to Helsinki to meet in the head. head with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The question is whether it will continue to hurt transatlantic relations – the cornerstone of international relations after the end of the Second World War – less or a lot.
Since his inauguration, Trump has come out of his son and has attracted other NATO members for not having spent the 2% of GDP pledged for defense. He returned the question to bottom of the screen Monday when he complained on Twitter that "the United States is spending more than any other NATO member country is not fair and not acceptable." Although these countries have increased their contributions after my installation they have to do a lot more, Germany registers 1% and the US 4%, and Europe benefits much more from NATO than from the United States. United States. "
Is that right, maybe in Trump's zero spirit, but not in reality, yes, other NATO members must increase their spending as promised." But only one member country has invoked the most important advantage of NATO, Article 5, which states that an attack against a country is an attack on all members: the United States, following the September 11.
Trump also falsely claimed that the United States has a $ 151 billion trade deficit with Europe.This is about the product deficit, but if the services are also taken into account, the current deficit is $ 101 billion.
Trump's military spending would make sense if he tried to cut the US budget for defense. But Trump proposed an increase of Pentagon spending, which in fiscal year 2019 would reach 686 m The dislike of NATO seems to be motivated not by potential savings, but by its apparent dislike for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a misunderstanding of what the budget deficit actually means. over
. European allies are not worried about Trump's behavior in Brussels of what he could say or do about Putin, which he seems so willing to agree on.
I leave Robert Special Advisor S. Mueller III to say whether the sinister motives of Trump's obvious desire to neglect Putin's many misconduct in the past – I will mention only a few: the attempts to Putin to undermine Western democracies, including ours; the illegal annexation of Crimea; violation of human rights and restriction of freedom of opinion, including the press; his alleged assassinations committed against dissidents abroad, including the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy from the UK with a paralyzing substance dating back to the Soviet era
Will Trump ignore all this of the desire to conclude a new alliance between the United States and Russia? It is destabilizing that our allies can even think about it.
Much of the rest of Trump's foreign policy is also bizarre. Customs duties imposed on products from allied countries, such as Canada or those of the European Union, do not degenerate into a trade war, but this is not the case in China. Many economists admit that China's trade policies are indeed inaccurate, but it is more likely that Trump's taxes – a difficult and heavy leverage – will make them terribly worse than American employees.
A Twitter message on Monday, Trump asserted that "China could exert negative pressure" to undermine the nuclear deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Still, Trump wrote that it is certain that Kim "will honor the contract we signed and, more importantly, our handshake."
I wrote then, and I still believe that Trump was right to meet Kim. But if the president even believes in the promising handshake of a criminal dictator by which he would pledge to give up nuclear weapons that he deems necessary for the sake of his security, then the president is crazy
Trump offers power to Russia and China while taking power from the United States and the Atlantic Alliance.
by Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post (19659014) (function (d, s, id) {
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