Donald Trump invited two journalists into his office in Trump Tower in New York and spoke frankly with them about his new world vision, NATO, the European Union (EU), and Russia.
This long interview shows again how the dangerous Trump slowly poisons NATO, the EU and axes the traditional Old Transatlantic World Order.
- He knows very, very little about NATO, the EU, other countries or the world order, but speaks out like a loud and ignorant new rich real estate investor, not a careful president.
- He does not care about details at all – his mindset is Twittered to 140 characters only in each case of world politics.
- For him everything is black or white, never grey.
- He thinks he is the best expert on anything.
- You are either with him or against him.
- Trump has the ego and big-mouth of a nuclear reactor and the security switch of a cow stable.
- Can his members of the cabinet or some traditional US senators like John McCaine stop Trump?
- He is far away from a fresh new creative and smart better world order with soft and hard factors of peacemaking as published by GLOBALO as World. 3.0
Michael Gove interviewed him for The Times in London. The New York Times noted: “The interview Mr. Trump granted was to Michael Gove, who strongly supported Brexit and ran for the Conservative leadership against Mrs. May, who immediately fired him from the cabinet. Mr. Trump’s first meeting with a British politician was with another May adversary, Nigel Farage, the former leader of the anti-Europe U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP.” Mr Gove had stabbed Mr Johnson in the back by withdrawing support for his leadership bid at the last minute and running himself. But he was defeated by Mrs. May.
The second journalist was Kai Diekmann, the publisher of BILD newspaper (picture) from Axel Springer Publishing house in Berlin. It is Germany’s and Europe’s largest tabloid with a circulation of 12 millions readers. Diekmann will leave his position end of this month. He is a close friend of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and one of the best journalists in the world.
Both are very well connected to global media czar Rupert Murdoch, also in control of pro-Trump Fox News TV and The Wall Street Journal, who has joined the Trump fans late.
Kai Diekmann wrote in BILD about Trump in a comment:
“Only one thing is for sure: Nothing is safe from him. No political rules, no diplomatic customs. He only thinks in deals. He is rude, offensive- disturbing honest. This can lead to conflicts, but break up encrusted conflicts too. Trump is incalculable.”
Is Trump a new kind of American Caligula in the 21st century, the famous emperor who burned down Rome (picture- living from AD 12 to 41, emperor in AD 37 to 41.), now destroying the transatlantic alliance of 70 years and stability in Europe flirting with populists and promoting appeasement with Mr Putin?
The only thing we know for sure is, Donald Trump will not burn down New York, as he owns real estate there. Everything else is incalculable, vague, unclear and may change in one speech or next day.
Trump is like 24/7 drifting sand.
He is like a white shark looking for the next “deal”, swimming around and away any second. You never know if he bites or kisses you – maybe both, maybe first one and later the other.
Nobody can calculate what he stands for, besides himself and his XXL ego.
His presidency is based on sand – his incalculable, always changing ideas.
His mindset, arguments and proposals are flexible and limited like his Twitter statements.
GLOBALO is analyzing Trump’s statements, published in BILD and The Times, and connects them with a helicopter perspective:
Here are the 7 most important things he said:
1.NATO is “obsolete”
Trump: “I said a long time ago that NATO had problems. Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago. Number two the countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to pay. A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States. With that being said, Nato is very important to me.”
Analysis:
- Trump is step by step poisoning NATO, the most important and successful alliance in global history and for the United States, the safeguard for peace in the North Atlantic since WW II.
- This is ultra-dangerous. His approach is not waking-up the alliance, but paralyzing it in a moment of challenges by a more aggressive Russia, cyber attacks and fake news propaganda and an occupied Eastern Ukraine.
- In few sentences he praised NATO and then calls it ‘obsolete’ – he is a political merry-go-round and incalculable.
- This is very dangerous as NATO’s ability to defend rests only on its credibility and balance of power with Russia, which needs the power and leadership of the United States. He is throwing both into jeopardy.
- The nuclear guarantee for Europe using American nukes to deter and defend is in danger with Trump.
- But he is right to demand more defense spending of two percent of the GDP, especially from Germany, as the experts from the World Security Network have demanded in the study ‘NATO 3.0’ in 2013.
2. Brexit is a “great thing”, more countries will follow out of the EU which will break up
Trump: “People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity.” If EU countries hadn’t been “forced to take in all of the refugees” then “you wouldn’t have a Brexit … I do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of people think. “And I think this, if refugees keep pouring into different parts of Europe… I think it’s gonna be very hard to keep it together because people are angry about it.”
“I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing,”
“People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity.”
3. Attack on Angela Merkel and her refugee policy
Trump: German Chancellor Angela Merkel made “one catastrophic mistake” by welcoming an unlimited number of Syrian refugees, which he referred to as “all these illegals”.
He also suggested the December Christmas market attack by a Tunisian man was one effect of Ms Merkel’s policies.
Analysis:
- Trumps meeting with Brexit promoter and populist Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, in the Trump Tower in November shows an emerging new alliance of populists from Trump to Marie Le Pen, president of the National Front in France, Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom and other nationalistic populists in Europe. Thus, Trump is axing the long time transatlantic consensus of a tolerant, pluralistic and open society, the base of the friendship of Europe with America for many decades.
- His negativity attitude toward the European Union and Angela Merkel is based on this populist influence, including Breitbart News and his senior advisor Stephen K. Bannon. It is a mix of arguments, propaganda and fake news.
- Trump is also influenced by extremist anti-Muslism propagandists like Frank Gaffney, who are part of a fundraising industry which enables a well donor-payed living based on fears and propaganda. They all ignore the facts, including that Islam is not ISIS.
- But Trump is right: It was a mistake of Angela Merkel to let more than one million refugees come to Germany in 2015 without a decent check of identities and a limit of the numbers – something criticized by many experts and moderate politicians in Germany as well.
4. Appeasement with Russia
Mr Trump wants a new arms control agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin
The President-elect said he will consider reviewing US sanctions on Russia if President Vladimir Putin is prepared to move away from confrontation.
“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it,” he said.
“But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”
Analysis:
- An arms control agreement between the United States and Russia reducing strategic nuclear weapons would be in line with the long-time wishes for a world with less atomic weapons. Much better than another arms race, as threatened by Putin and Trump just weeks before.
- But it could be a trick and judo-like move of Mr Putin as well, when such a big deal carves out Ukraine and Crimea. Only because of the violations of international law by Russia did the European states and the US agree to sanctions. To lift them without a solution in Ukraine would be nothing else than appeasement in Eastern Europe and very destabilizing.
- Trump should implement the creative ideas for a peace-plan from the White Paper Ukraine – this is a solution needed and something the inactive Obama administration missed for two years.
5. What about Syria and ISIS?
Trump: He criticized President Barack Obama: “Nothing happened” when the US “had a chance to do something when we had the line in the sand.”
“Aleppo was nasty. I mean when you see them shooting old ladies walking out of town — they can’t even walk and they’re shooting ’em — it almost looks like they’re shooting ’em for sport — ah no, that’s… a terrible situation.”
Analysis:
- Needed is a fresh Grand Double Strategy for Syria and Iraq of no less than 33 elements to eliminate ISIS as proposed by the World Security Network for a long time. The Obama approach was always too late and not clever and strong enough.
- Russia could be integrated into these models which would deny any radical rebels the power in Damascus, something Israel wants to avoid as well.
6. How to treat hostile Iran?
Trump: “I just don’t want to play the cards.” He was “not happy” with Barack Obama’s deal with Iran on nuclear weapons and described it as “one of the worst deals ever made”.”I think it’s one of the dumbest deals I’ve ever seen… Where you give … $150 billion back to a country, where you give 1.7 billion in cash. “”Did you ever see $100 million in hundred-dollar bills? It’s a lot. 1.7 billion in cash. Plane loads. Many planes. Boom. 1.7 billion. I don’t understand. I think that money is in Swiss bank accounts.”
Analysis:
- Iran still wants the bomb. The Iran deal just pushed the break-out time (to assemble an a-bomb) from just 3 to now 12 months. Would Trump risk a war, maybe together with Israel? This strike option must be on the table to deter the bomb.
- Trump will try to contain Tehran together with Saudi Arabia – still unclear how.
- Should Trump kill the Iran deal? Unclear for him yet.
7. Why he loves Twitter and will continue
Trump: He boasted about his 46 million followers on social media and said he tweets so much because he is “covered so dishonestly by the press”.
“I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working — and the tweeting, I thought I’d do less of it, but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press — so dishonestly — that I can put out Twitter — and it’s not 140, it’s now 280 — I can go bing bing bing… and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out — this morning on television, Fox — ‘Donald Trump, we have breaking news’.”
Analysis:
- Here Trump has a self-serving point: He reaches more than 46 million people and many voters in his own words and all media report each day about his Tweets as well. It is his propaganda tool number one.
- Nevertheless it is no good for anybody to Twitter early in the morning with a red face of anger.
- Big problems cannot be answered in 140 characters.
- Trump should remember a quote by Pentagon guru Dr Fritz Kraemer: “Character counts, not position and title.“