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Retired Three-Star General Ben Hodges Slams Trump As 'Mafia Type'

Retired Three-Star General Ben Hodges Slams Trump As 'Mafia Type'

Former President Donald Trump's recent comments suggesting he would compromise the US' agreement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has alarmed and angered national security experts, including retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.

During an interview with British newspaperThe Times, Hodges called out Trump for signaling that he would violate Article 5 of NATO, which pertains to the collective agreement between NATO countries that they will rally to the defense of any ally who is attacked by Russia. In a recent speech, Trump spoke about a conversation with "one of the presidents of a big country" who "stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?' Trump then said he "would not protect" that country if it wasn't contributing enough funding to NATO, and "would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want."

"You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills," Trump said.

"Trump hates alliances. He hates an obligation where he'd have to live up to something," Hodges said. "Mafia type that he is, he doesn't want anybody restricting his options. He couldn't care less about moral obligations. He's willing to chuck the whole thing away."

Hodges warned that if Trump was elected to a second term in November, America's European allies would have every reason to worry about the former president not honoring his predecessors' commitments to preserving the NATO alliance.

"We would be foolish not to take at face value exactly what [Trump] says," Hodges said. "In his last term, he did have people around him who were able to moderate certain things, at least for a period of time. He won't make that same mistake again."

The NATO alliance has become particularly important as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his incursion into Ukraine's Donbas region and maintains his occupation of the Crimean Peninsula. NATO added Finland to its alliance last year, and Sweden is on the verge of joining the alliance as well. Putin argued that NATO's expansion into eastern Europe constituted encroachment by the West necessitated his attack on Ukraine in 2022. However, Ukraine has countered that Putin's aggression since its 2014 annexation of Crimea — which led to its expulsion from the G8 — will only worsen, adding that they want to regain control of both the peninsula and the disputed Donbas territory.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

A ‘Gift’ To Putin: Retired Army Commander Blasts Trump Attack On Allies

A ‘Gift’ To Putin: Retired Army Commander Blasts Trump Attack On Allies

Trump’s relentless attacks on U.S. allies in Europe are a gift to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, according to someone who should know.

“It’s just so unhelpful when he’s kicking the most important allies in the ass publicly,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told Public Radio International on Wednesday.

When Trump “refers to the EU as an enemy of the United States, that’s a gift to the president of the Russian Federation and also to the president of China,” Hodges added. “This is not helpful.”

Trump has spent much of his tenure in the Oval Office trashing U.S. allies while closely aligning himself with dictators and authoritarian regimes. Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of the NATO alliance, calling it “obsolete” and even threatening to pull out of the long-standing alliance.

Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, said abandoning NATO would be “a geopolitical mistake of epic proportion.” Using language similar to Hodges, Stavridis said that even discussing the possibility of leaving NATO “would be the gift of the century for Putin.”

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis starkly warned that Trump’s attacks on allies were deeply worrying. “My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign acts and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues,” Mattis wrote in his December 2018 resignation letter, adding that Trump does not share these key values.

Trump giving a gift to Putin would be par for the course for this administration. In a July 2018 press conference in Helsinki, Trump stood on a global stage and trashed U.S. intelligence agencies, siding with Putin’s lie that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. After watching the press conference, former CIA Director John Brennan called Putin the “master puppeteer of Donald Trump.”

Trump has diminished the image of the United States on the global stage, so much so that diplomats openly laugh at him at venues like the United Nations. His attacks on allies only hurt America’s standing in the world, and are, indeed, “not helpful.”

Published with permission of The American Independent.

IMAGE: Lieutenant General Ben Hodges (L), commanding general of the US Army in Europe at January 2018 NATO exercises in Poland. AFP Photo