Opinion: Trump will withdraw US from NATO if wins 2024 presidential election
Former National Security Advisor to ex-US President Donald Trump John Bolton is confident that if the politician wins the November presidential election, he will withdraw the United States from NATO, RIA Novosti reports
“I think Trump is working out a position in which he will be able to say that we are withdrawing today. He almost did it in 2018, and I think it will be one of the early priorities of his second term,” John Bolton noted in an interview for the YouTube channel MeidasTouch.
John Bolton does not believe that Trump is bargaining with the rest of NATO members so that they spend more on the alliance, but he seriously intends to withdraw the country from it.
Donald Trump has previously made it clear that if he wins the November elections in the United States, he can convene a NATO summit in June 2025 to discuss the future of the North Atlantic Alliance. While speaking at a rally of his supporters in South Carolina, he revealed that when he was president, the head of an unnamed ‘big country’ of NATO asked him if the United States would provide protection to the alliance in case of a Russian ‘attack’. Trump replied to him that he would not do this, since NATO countries did not allocate enough funds for defence, adding that he would ‘approve them [the Russian Federation] doing whatever the hell they want’.
Trump has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the work of NATO and threatened to withdraw the US from the organisation if European partners do not take more financial responsibility for their own security.
