Shock, condemnation after Trump questions NATO commitments

WASHINGTON -- Alarm and condemnation erupted Thursday from European capitals, the White House and leaders of Donald Trump's own party after the Republican presidential nominee suggested the United States might abandon its NATO military commitments if he were elected president.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who backed Trump at the party's national convention only two days earlier, said he totally disagreed with the statement but was willing to "chalk it up to a rookie mistake."

McConnell called NATO "the most successful military alliance in the history of the world" in a Facebook interview with The New York Times.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance agreement was crystal clear: "We defend each other."

"I will not interfere in the U.S. election campaign," Stoltenberg said. But he pointedly added, "Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States."

Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed the United States' commitment to NATO.

"This administration, like every single administration, Republican and Democrat alike since 1949, remains fully committed to the NATO alliance and to our security commitments under Article 5, which is absolutely bedrock to our membership and to our partnership with NATO."

Trump's suggestion, in an interview with the Times, would upend decades of American foreign policy and rock the security structures that have underpinned European and global stability since the end of World War II.

Trump said in the Times interview he would review allies' financial contributions -- in this case, those from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- before acting under NATO's mutual-defense clause if any of the countries were attacked by Russia.

Various U.S. administrations have complained, often bitterly, that many NATO members do not foot their share of the alliance's bills.

The U.S. accounts for more than 70 percent of all NATO defense spending and only four other allies -- Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland -- meet the minimum 2 percent of gross domestic product spending on defense NATO requires.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Trump supporter and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said "many of us are becoming exasperated with the fact that the U.S. is playing such an outsized role in the protection of our NATO allies, even though we greatly appreciate and respect the importance of the alliance itself."

But Trump's floating of the idea the spending target would be a prerequisite for the U.S. to defend a NATO ally was an abrupt break from longstanding American policy.

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves tweeted his country was one of the few to meet the minimum-defense expenditure and pointedly noted Estonia "fought, with no caveats" on behalf of the U.S. in Afghanistan.

The only time the treaty's mutual-defense clause has been invoked was in 2002, when NATO surveillance planes patrolled American skies and deployed a third of the troops sent to Afghanistan for a decade. More than 1,000 non-American troops died in Afghanistan.

Ilves' fellow Eastern European leaders sought to calm the furor.

"Regardless of who will be the president of America, we will trust in America," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters in Vilnius.

Yet, people throughout Eastern Europe expressed deep concern. Fears of Russian aggression have run high since it annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea.

"His words were irresponsible, and they inspired fear in me. I'm worried about the world's future, about Poland's future," said 39-year-old schoolteacher Lidia Zagorowska in Warsaw, Poland.