Trump's recent remarks about Putin should worry NATO member states

President-Elect Donald Trump has said a lot of things that have worried his allies since he was re-elected by the American people. However, some of Trump's latest remarks have put many NATO member states on edge.

Trump recently made explicit comments regarding Washington's involvement in Ukraine and hinted at the possibility of the United States pulling out of NATO.

AP News writes that, on a television interview for NBC, Trump requested Russian President Vladimir Putin to please reach a ceasefire agreement and end the war in Ukraine.

The comment, which takes the White House policy in a different direction than Joe Biden's Administration, was made just weeks before Trump was set to be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.

The New York real estate mogul also had a few words for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Trump has criticized in the past.

“Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump wrote on social media, as quoted by AP News.

Trump's comments seem to show that the second Trump Administration will break from the Biden White House in many key policies abroad.

During the same NBC interview, Trump declared that he was open to the possibility of the United States leaving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

According to Agence France-Presse, the New York mogul-turned-president would seriously consider abandoning NATO if he felt that the United States wasn’t “treated fairly” and felt other member states weren’t “paying their bills”.

Newsweek writes that NATO has faced a series of changes since the first time Trump was in the White House, with over 20 allies now giving 2% of their GDP to the military coalition.

Likewise, most experts interviewed by Newsweek agree that the US defense policy is too entrenched in NATO to be able to pull out easily and, overall, the alliance works for Washington’s benefit.

However, if Donald Trump has proven one thing again and again its making the unlikely into a reality. Who says he won’t be able to leave NATO, if he wants to?

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