Ranking Member Schiff Statement Regarding Trump's Comments on NATO Alliance

Statement

Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement:

"For nearly seven decades the North Atlantic Treaty organization has been the centerpiece of the defense of Europe and a key component of our own national security. NATO has been much more than just bulwark against Soviet communism and Russian aggression; it has demonstrated to the world that a community of democracies can unite together in a common defense of shared values and shared freedoms. And, support for NATO here at home has always been bipartisan and universal -- from President Truman to President Eisenhower to President Reagan and now to President Obama and Secretary Clinton, generations of American leaders have seen the transatlantic alliance as essential. Now, at the moment of greatest peril for NATO since the end of the Cold War, Donald Trump, the GOP's newly-crowned standard-bearer, has broken with that tradition and questioned the American commitment to collective defense that is at the heart of the alliance.

"In an interview with the New York Times, Trump lavished praise on Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, while threatening to withhold assistance from NATO allies if they are attacked by Russia unless they "have fulfilled their obligations to us." What Trump does not seem to grasp is that Europe is not one of his construction sites and NATO, the most successful mutual defense pact in history, is not some sort of protection racket that he controls.

"Trump has often spoken of the impact that 9/11 had on New York, his hometown. He might not realize that NATO's collective defense provision has been invoked only once in the alliance's history - after 9/11. From mid-October 2001 to mid-May 2002 seven NATO AWACS radar aircraft were patrolling the skies over the United States, while NATO troops joined American forces in driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and then spending years to stabilize that country with us. Even the tiny Baltic States, who suffered under Soviet rule for decades and are now threatened by Putin, have contributed to the Afghan mission, yet Trump dismisses them out of hand and seems to invite Putin to turn his attentions to them.

"Trump says he does not want to tell Putin whether he would honor our collective defense obligations under NATO, and he apparently doesn't want the Baltic nations, among others threatened by Russian aggression, to know either. In the same interview, he says he doesn't want to tell ISIS his plans to defeat them, because he doesn't want them to know. But the people left most in the dark about a Trump national security policy that would turn the international order on its head, are the American people -- who would evidently have to wait until after the election to find out.

"Donald Trump has made more than his fair share of dangerous and irresponsible comments over the course of this campaign, but his glib rejection of 70 years of coordination with our NATO allies is perhaps the most dangerous. That such a statement would come from the Presidential nominee of the party of Ronald Reagan is simply mind boggling."

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