Fmr. U.S. Amb. To NATO: What Trump’s Done in Greenland Is Breaking the ‘Bond of Trust’

EXCERPT:

BURNS: "Well, I think the irony here, Erin, is that, you know, President Trump can legitimately take some credit for the fact that he has pushed the NATO allies to spend more on defense. Most of these allies were spending below 2% of their gross domestic product on defense. They‘ve all committed to spend 3.5%, an additional 1.5% on military infrastructure. This is a major achievement. He won‘t take the win. It‘s as if he‘s talking about a Europe of three or four or five years ago, not the Europe of today that is really focused on the threat from Russia. And I think on -- you know, you catalog the abusive comments he‘s made, the sarcastic comments, the critical comments personally about a number of NATO leaders. We‘ve never had an American president do that. Can you imagine Truman or Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan criticizing, in personal terms the Italian prime minister, the French president, the German chancellor, the British prime minister? That‘s all happened in the last two or three months. And I think what he‘s done on Greenland, he‘s broken the bond of trust that is at the heart of the NATO alliance. As you mentioned, I was the American ambassador at NATO on 9/11 when New York City was attacked, and  Washington, D.C.. The allies rushed to our defense. Within 24 hours, they had pledged to defend us. Every single one of them went into Afghanistan. So we really need NATO. NATO is important for the United States. And the threat now is Putin and Russia. So when the president says somehow the Atlantic Ocean is going to protect us in the 21st century from Russia, he's just badly mistaken. He‘s living in some other century, but not the century we‘re living in."