NATO

“And I think Putin will become a stronger player on the global stage, particularly as it relates to his relationship with NATO. Over the next year and he's been a little bit quiet the last few years. He was kind of, I'd say, suppressed with sanctions and all th…”

“We should not want to add Ukraine or Georgia to NATO. That would do nothing to enhance the security of the United States.”

“His behavior is very rational in response to what's gone on for 30 years. And his requests are that he is feeling threatened and he is trying to avoid military conflict as much as he can.”

“If we would just give up on that position or just reaffirm that Ukraine should not be admitted to NATO, it would enormously help defuse tensions with Russia.”

“In 2008, he wrote a memo To Condoleezza Rice, who was then the Secretary of State, and what he said is, this is about Ukrainian entry into NATO, he said, Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite, not just Putin.”

“Ukraine is not going to be a member of NATO.”

“If we had been willing to basically affirm That we believe in Ukraine's sovereignty, but they are not a part of NATO. That might have diffused this conflict.”

“Blinken came out with this statement, NATO's door is open and will remain open. It was perhaps the most provocative thing he could have said in that situation.”

“If we had done it preemptively, it would have made a difference.”

“What a no-fly zone means is that you're going to shoot down Russian planes. That's what it means. You are going to war. It may not be boots on the ground. It's boots in the sky.”

“Just this week, Zelensky in an interview with Fried Zakaria admitted he was told by Blinken You will not be part of NATO, but we don't want to admit that publicly.”

“Ukraine's gonna be neutral, they can't be part of NATO, they get some security guarantees from the West in exchange for that.”

“Russia's not aggressive because, so hold on a second, let me finish the thought. Right, right, no, hold on. Russia's, let me respond to the point that you've sat there for two minutes staring at. Russia is not surrounded by NATO. Russia isn't aggressive becaus…”

“Baker made the promise to Gorbachev, not one inch eastward. Gorbachev said, yes, ok, they can reunify, but we do not want NATO moving up to our border. Baker made that promise. We have brought NATO up to their border.”

“This was basically a contradiction of the verbal assurances that James Baker and President George Herbert Walker Bush had given Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO one inch eastward.”

“The question is, did the US State Department do everything they could to avoid this war? And my point is, absolutely not. They should have taken this Ukraine issue off the table in writing before the invasion.”

“Back in the 19 nineties, you had people like George Kennan, who was the architect of our Cold War containment policy. You had William J. Perry was Bill Clinton's defense secretary. You had Henry Kissinger, you had John Mearsheimer, all warned that bringing NAT…”

“So I think he would have shut the door so ferociously on Ukraine and NATO, and anybody that crossed that line, he would have tarred and feathered publicly. And I think the end result would have been that Putin could have found an off ramp well before he invade…”

“We gave our word that we would not expand NATO one inch to the east, and now we've gone into 13 countries.”

“What the deal would have provided is that the Russians would move back to pre-war lines if the Ukrainians would agree not to become a member of NATO.”

“Because all these countries, when they join NATO, agree to spend two percent of their GDP on defense. And they can only spend that money on defense contractors who are interoperable with the NATO platform, which is basically these approved Western contractors.”

“Every time you add a country to NATO, you're making a commitment for Americans to have to go defend that country. And I would argue that's a liability, not an asset for America.”

“Because I don't think that we would have, if I was president, I don't think we would have gotten to the point of those things rolling in. Angela Merkel made some disastrous comments. Putin made a hard demand. We would have said hard no to Ukraine joining NATO,…”

“I think it is now a foregone conclusion that Ukraine will be admitted to NATO, and frankly, it's got to be now, I think, one of the penalties and one of the prices that Putin pays for his aggression.”

“We armed Ukraine, but we also told Ukraine, you know, don't even think about raising NATO as a membership, as a way to go.”

“I think there's a risk that Turkey gets challenged to leave NATO. That a lot of what's going on right now where Turkey is siding with Hamas, this has obviously been talked about and rumored about for a long time. There's no real mechanism, by the way, for kick…”

“And also Clinton, who is so steeped in history, And policy is not somebody that would say something like that in an uncalculated way only to pull back. That does not seem, and I know Bill Clinton, that is not who he is. So just in that context, he is a very th…”

“The US reneged on this promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO one inch eastward. And instead we began multiple waves of NATO expansion.”

“Countries don't have a right to join NATO any more than I have a right to join Augusta Country Club. Just because I'm a golf player doesn't mean I get to join Augusta, okay? It's up to the current membership of Augusta or NATO to decide whether they're going t…”

“At the next White House press conference, you will hear the question asked by reporters, is this the White House position? And they will say, yes, it is.”

“I think the statements are correct, that Ukraine joining NATO escalates conflict, and we will find ourselves in a de facto global conflict, world war.”

“Clearly the right move here would have been to kick the can down the road and just tell Putin, we'll take it off. We'll take needle off the table for 10 years or 20 years, and then we could have outlasted Putin.”

“So for 20 years, I heard that NATO if Ukraine goes into NATO, it's a real problem for Russia. I've heard that for a long time. And I think that's really why this war started.”

“And you know, it turns out that the month before the Russians invaded, Blinken told Lavrov that the administration was not only going to bring Ukraine into NATO, but that they thought it was okay for the United States to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine.”

“Ukraine, I don't want to see American blood spilled, and as long as there's a NATO, and I agree there should be a NATO, I'd rather see us spend money than put soldiers in harm's way.”

“If you actually listen to what the Russians have said, there's only been two red lines. The first red line was they said they would not accept NATO expanding to Ukraine, and they proved their seriousness on that issue by invading Ukraine in February of 2022. T…”

“So I would argue maybe NATO in a multipolar world of abundance isn't as necessary as it has been in the past century, which was a world that was limited in resources, Fighting for access and a growing global population, particularly in the developed world in t…”

“A foreign leader came to me relatively recently, this is actually last week small country, but very important country strategically, very good ally of the United States, and basically pitched me On creating a NATO alternative outside of Europe, but where count…”

“NATO is like the single most destructive force that we're a part of, way more than the UN.”

“This is the same kind of threat inflation that we've heard for years from neocons about Russia's supposedly Imperial ambitions to conquer all of Europe. There's simply no basis for believing it.”