Warner ‘Afraid’ Putin Will Take Advantage Of Trump If They Meet Alone

Some Democrats have already called on Trump to drop out of the meeting, and even John McCain said Trump shouldn’t do it if he’s “not prepared to hold Putin accountable”.

“If we continue to be a little baby in the background as the President thinks we should be, then we’re going to continue to get pushed around and there’s going to be a very serious effect in Europe, in the United States, in every free election around this world”, said the member of the House Armed Services committee.

The alliance, which sees an attack on one member as an attack on all, was set up at the height of the Cold War, as a counterbalance to the Warsaw Pact between the Soviets and their satellite states. “It all came together at the end”.

Allied NATO defense spending has actually increased on average 3.1 percent since 2014.

He complained the United States “pays tens of Billions of Dollars too much to subsidize Europe” and demanded that member nations meet their pledge to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence, which “must ultimately go to 4%!”

“Let’s not forget that the hope of a quick trade deal with the U.S. was a significant factor in Theresa May’s decision to invite Trump in the first place”. “All Allies have started to increase the amount they spend on defence in real terms and some two-thirds of Allies have national plans in place to spend 2% of their Gross Domestic Product on defence by 2024”. United States defense spending accounts for roughly 67% of this, but it’s also true the USA has the highest defense budget in the world by far and this is linked to both its strong economy and internal politics. But the other members were rattled enough to convene an emergency meeting on the spending issue. “They would not like to have Crimea be recognized as part of Russian Federation, as that would undermine the type of rules-based order – things like national sovereignty, territorial integrity – that a small country with a long border facing Russian Federation, like Finland, ultimately depends on”, he said. Why are there only 5 out of 29 countries that have met their commitment?

The delegations of the two sides will include the heads of Russian and US foreign policy departments and experts from their government bodies. “So we are helping some of those countries get online and buy the best equipment”.

“Trump has maybe a little less room to maneuver if he wants to downplay the issue or pretend that it’s not real”, said Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russian Federation expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and other lawmakers in calling on Trump to immediately cancel the upcoming summit.

Another diplomatic source said that a “special session on burden sharing is ongoing”.

“Nobody knows when Trump is doing worldwide diplomacy and when he is doing election campaigning in Montana”, Frederiksen said, Politico reported.

He reserved his strongest criticism for Germany, with what one senior diplomat from one of Washington’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies described as a “cold-blooded” assault.