Has Trump actually been good for NATO?

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jenn, official new Worldly co-host Alex Ward, and special guest Dr. Alina Polyakova discuss President Trump’s big NATO summit this week and his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has openly criticized the NATO military alliance and said he wants a better relationship with Russia. But Alina, an expert who studies Europe and Russia, argues the NATO alliance is actually in a lot better shape now than it has been in years. Jenn gets really excited about exclamation marks, Alex makes his debut as an official member of the Worldly crew, and Alina compares Trump’s treatment of NATO allies to an abusive relationship. Links! Here's a primer on NATO, in case you wanted to go into more depth than our quick overview We talked a lot about Russia's relationship with Ukraine in this episode, and about the Baltics. Here's some reading on both of those situations. Here's what we expected from the NATO summit and a good run down of what's actually happened. Alina also has a really good WSJ write up of NATO and the Trump presidency. Looking ahead: Alex recommends this guide to Trump's meeting with Putin. Vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Awards! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to worldly, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Jen Williams. I'm here with our brand new official co-host
0:15.2	Alex Ward and our special guest today, Dr. Alina PolioCova.
0:19.4	Alina, do you want to introduce yourself?
0:21.6	Hi, thanks for having me on Fox.
0:23.7	I'm a fellow Brookings and look forward talking about NATO and Russia with you.
0:28.3	Yeah, so she's going to help us talk through President Trump's meeting at NATO and his upcoming meeting with Russian
0:34.5	President Vladimir Putin. So first, NATO. Trump flew to Belgium this week and he
0:39.3	met with the other 28 members of the NATO Military alliance. In the past Trump is
0:44.6	railed against NATO. He's called it obsolete. He's complained that the US
0:48.6	spends way more money on defense than the other countries in the alliance do and he's basically done
0:53.8	his best to stir things up at this meeting too. So you could be forgiven for
0:57.8	thinking that Trump's been terrible for NATO overall. But if you actually look
1:02.0	past all the noise, NATO's doing pretty well under his presidency.
1:06.2	So today on worldly, has Trump been good for NATO?
1:11.0	First to set the scene, Alex, can you give me a really quick primers on NATO?
1:15.0	Sure, it's currently an alliance of 29 countries.
1:18.0	It was started four years after World War II in 1949.
1:21.0	It was effectively created to one ensure peace on the European continent, but also to basically keep the Soviet Union from further attacking.
1:29.0	It has grown over time and it is now sort of the premier political military alliance that the United States
1:35.1	relies on to one have security in Europe but also project power if you want to put it that way
1:39.5	throughout the world.
1:40.5	Right and it's a collective defense agreement right explain what that means a little bit.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.