Vladimir Putin Quotes

I suspect that Donald Trump is going to be very tough with those countries that don't spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. He will ask them why should we allow a free-ride policy.

We're spending on numerous countries - very substantial countries, you know the countries we're talking about - but we're defending them for a fraction of the cost.

It is possible there will be much less support for NATO because there is a lot of identification of the United States with NATO.

As long as NATO changes when the world is changing, we will be very important for the security of all our allies, including the United States.

I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the biggest brunt of it.

The biggest budget is the military budget. For what? We're fighting two wars in very small countries that have no nuclear weapons, that have no capabilities to destroy anything. They probably couldn't even get to America.

I see NATO as a good thing to have - I look at the Ukraine situation and I say, so Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we are doing all of the lifting, they're not doing anything.

NATO was formed post-World War II. We're a little bit more than a half-century old. Do we want NATO to go on for another half-century? I think that the answer is, sitting here today: I don't know. If I had to bet on it, I would say, yeah, we have to have these alliances going forward and see who's going to pay for them.

After many, many years of decline in defense spending across Europe and Canada, in 2016, we saw the first significant increase. We still have a long way to go, but at least European allies have kind of started move in the right direction.

America picks up 73 percent of the cost of NATO. We're paying to protect them. Wouldn't it be nice if people would pay, and we could do things properly? That's got to change.

I think NATO is obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger - much larger than Russia is today. I'm not saying Russia is not a threat. But we have other threats. We have the threat of terrorism. And NATO doesn't discuss terrorism. NATO's not meant for terrorism. NATO doesn't have the right countries in it for terrorism.

NATO's got a vital role to play. It's very important that we protect NATO.

I think NATO needs to be looked at.

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.

The spending of our tax dollars by the Pentagon represents the greatest social disease of our country; I call it Pentagonorrhea.

Mammoth organizations, these ponderous processes. Many people don't realize that the nuclear capability that this country [USA] amassed and maintained over the period of the Cold War cost $6 trillion .

One of the greatest concerns that I had when I became President was the vast array of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union and a few other countries, and also the great proliferation of conventional weapons, non-nuclear weapons, particularly as a tremendous burden on the economies of developing or very poor countries.

NATO is based on shared values. Democracy, individual civil liberties and the rule of law. In public and also in meetings with the allies, I have repeatedly pointed out how crucial these common values are. They are the basis for our unity, and unity is the most important basis for our strength.

As far as Japan is concerned, I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world.

President Obama wants to raise taxes on the country's richest people. And you thought Donald Trump hated him before.

As a rich country, we can, in some sense, "afford" the war. But spending money on the war means that we are not spending money on other things that we could have spent the money on.

The Foreign Office is a very important arm of the British state and I think Britain has a fantastic diplomatic service. We are the only country in the world spending 2% of our national income on defence and 0.7% of our national income on aid. We are the only country in the world doing both of those things.

On the security front, the United States must continue to play a leadership role. There simply is not another country in the world that commands the respect or has the capabilities that we do, and we must not shrink from our responsibilities.

The United States of America has helped underwrite the global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

I'm all in favor of NATO.