Trump will pull US out of NATO if he wins election, ex-adviser warns

CNN —

As US allies reel from Donald Trump’s weekend comments encouraging Russia to attack European allies if they don’t meet NATO budget contribution goals, multiple former Trump advisers warn in my upcoming book that the former president will seek to formally withdraw the US from the NATO alliance if he wins a second term.

In “The Return of Great Powers”, which will be published March 12, a former senior US official, who served in both the Trump and Biden administrations at a high level, told me that if Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November “the US will be out of NATO.”

“NATO would be in real jeopardy,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, agreed. “I think he would try to get out.”

Trump’s disparagement of US security commitments extends to its mutual defense agreements with South Korea and Japan as well, retired General John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff to Trump, told me.

“The point is, he saw absolutely no point in NATO,” Kelly said in the book. “He was just dead set against having troops in South Korea, again, a deterrent force, or having troops in Japan, a deterrent force.”

“He thought (Vladimir) Putin was an okay guy and Kim (Jong Un) was an okay guy ­that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” Kelly recalled. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”

Senior members of the administration I spoke to for the book also detailed how Trump came close to withdrawing the US from the alliance, which is a key bedrock of Western security against Russia, in his first term and warn he is likely to go further in a second.

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