Trump’s Assault On NATO Is Precisely What Putin Wants

Is it any wonder Donald Trump trashed our NATO allies one week before he is to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin?

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day” that by distancing the United States from its allies, Trump is handing Putin exactly what he wants.

King said:

“Putin’s dream has been a weakening and undermining European unity and the western alliance. There’s no question. You can go back and read Putin’s speeches. He views the western alliance as a threat and he wants to see it undermined. That’s their strategy. If he sees the weakness, the disunity between the US and Europe, you know, who knows what happens in the Balkans, for example. I’m afraid that we’re playing into Putin’s hands.”

In fact, Moscow regards the upcoming summit as U.S. recognition of Russian status and realization  the world must take Russian interests seriously.

Russian senator from the ruling United Russia party, Alexei Pushkov, stated:

“The fact that a Putin-Trump meeting will happen says only one thing: that for all its hysteria, the United States is not able to isolate or ignore Russia. It took a long time for Washington to get that idea, but it got there in the end.”

Andrey Kortunov, head of RIAC, a foreign policy think tank close to the Foreign Ministry, said Putin has “already got his victory.”

Kortunov added:

“It allows him to make his point that Russia is not isolated, that Russia is a great power, and to some extent can even claim an equal status with the United States, at least in the security field.”

Malcolm Nance, former United States Navy senior chief petty officer specializing in naval cryptology, intelligence and foreign policy analyst, MSNBC analyst, and author of The Plot to Hack America and The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West, stated about Trump’s meeting with Putin:

“I mean, quite honestly, Trump is going there to meet with his handler. He’s going to meet with the guy he’s been worshipping and admiring for years, not just the last two years. And that doesn’t bode well for the United States…Today, he normalized the KGB. Donald Trump today normalized him just as he normalized the Nazis in Charlottesville. This is very dangerous for American democracy. And to have several Republicans senators go there to pave the way in this grand appeasement of Moscow only shows the Republican Party has surrendered to Russia. And this will hurt this American constitutional republic seriously.”

If you’ve been wondering why Trump unloaded on NATO allies, it isn’t because he’s unhinged (although that’s an argument as well). There is a well-devised playbook coming right out of Moscow, and Trump is the star quarterback.

Image credit: The Daily Banter

Ted Millar is writer and teacher. His work has been featured in myriad literary journals, including Better Than Starbucks, The Broke Bohemian, Straight Forward Poetry, Caesura, Circle Show, Cactus Heart, Third Wednesday, and The Voices Project. He is also a contributor to The Left Place blog on Substack, and Medium.