If Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election he would have dismantled much of the security institutions thatcame into being during the Cold War. The US would have abdicated it’s position as the world’s leading democracy.
Esper was a lifelong Republican and had worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation as well as for Republican senators Bill Frist and Chuck Hagel. But he told his closest colleagues that as he watched TV news anchors cover the election results, he found himself rooting for the Democrat. Esper had worked with Biden and his secretary of state in waiting, Antony Blinken, when he was a senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He had confidence that they were serious, stable people who cared deeply about shoring up national security. Esper couldn’t say the same about Trump. In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection. When those alliances had come up in meetings with Esper and other top aides, some advisers warned Trump that shredding them before the election would be politically dangerous.
“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”
Abandoning America’s long standing allies would be destabilizing both in Europe and in East Asia. My father fought in the Korean war, and ignoring their sacrifice to roll back aggression in Korea would be disgraceful.
Trump told Hannity he would have abandoned Ukraine to Putin’s aggression.
By Julia Davis
Two weeks before the talks between Biden and Putin, Trump appeared on Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity. He said, in part: “I don't want to fight the battle for Ukraine, they've got to fight their own battles.”
Trump’s words delighted pro-Kremlin propagandists. State TV show The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev aired a translated clip of his statements to Hannity, and host Vladimir Soloviev introduced it by pointing out: “Things were so good under Trump... Listen to Trumpushka.” After listening to Trump dismiss the idea of helping Ukraine fight off Russian aggression, Soloviev sighed: “[He is] so sorely missed.”
Instead of dealing with a push-over in the White House Vladimir Putin has to deal with President Biden, who is standing up against Russian intimidation using the threat of military aggression. Russian President Putin seems to want to restore Russia’s imperial empire.
By Andrew Roth in Moscow and Jon Henley
Moscow, which seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and has since backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, has unnerved the west by massing tens of thousands of troops near the border, sparking fears of a new attack, possibly including further seizures of Ukrainian territory.
Moscow has denied plans for an assault, saying the troop movements are to defend Russia against an encroaching western military, and has not explicitly tied the threat of an eventual assault to the failure of talks with the US.
But Vladimir Putin has said he would review “military-technical responses” if his demands – a wishlist of security proposals, including a promise that Nato would give up any military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine – are not met.