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10 months ago
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Flattery, gifts, and more are on the table when it comes to European officials dealing with a theoretical future president Donald Trump, according to a report published on Saturday.
Trump has bucked historically consistent concepts when it comes to dealing with European nations, including a rejection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, "America’s most important military alliance," according to the New York Times. Trump has said repeatedly that withdrawing from NATO would save the U.S. money.
That's causing some panic abroad, according to the Times.
"In interviews over the past several months, more than a half-dozen current and former European diplomats — speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Mr. Trump should he win — said alarm was rising on Embassy Row and among their home governments that Mr. Trump’s return could mean not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but a broader American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance," the article states.
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The Times quoted James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was NATO’s supreme allied commander until 2013, as saying there is a "great fear" in Europe about Trump's tentative plans.
It also reported that most officials were simply "out of ideas" when it comes to the Don.
"The interviews with current and former diplomats revealed that European officials were mostly out of ideas for how to deal with Mr. Trump other than returning to a previous playbook of flattery and transactional tributes," the article says. "Smaller countries that are more vulnerable to Russian attacks are expected to try to buy their way into Mr. Trump’s good graces by increasing their orders of American weapons or — as Poland did during his term — by performing grand acts of adulation, including offering to name a military base Fort Trump in return for his placing a permanent presence there."
English (US)