Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ripped Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech Sunday, saying the bombastic billionaire doesn’t understand how to negotiate with foreign powers.
“Based on the speech, you’d have somebody who doesn’t understand the difference between a business negotiation and a negotiation with sovereign powers,” Gates said on ABC’s “This Week.” “He doesn’t understand that there’s a give-and-take in international relations that is different than in the business community.”
In a foreign policy address last week, Trump said he’d embrace an “America first” approach to the world. Gates, who served under both President Obama and President George W. Bush, said his talk is rife with contradictions.
“He on the one hand says we need to be a more reliable ally to our friends,” Gates said. “And then in the next breath he basically says we’re going to rip up all those burden-sharing agreements that we’ve had over the decades with them and make them go their own way if they don’t pay for everything.”
Gates said he’s worked with presidents with little foreign policy experience before, but those men have been willing to listen to expert advisers.
“One of the things that worries me [about Trump] is that he doesn’t appear to listen to people. He believes that he has all the answers, that he’s the smartest man in the room,” he said.
Gates noted foreign leaders are also worried about Trump’s “unpredictability, his lack of understanding of the complexity of international affairs, his threats, his claims that he’s going to make other countries do things when in fact the president of the United States does not have the power to make them do things.”
“I think a lot of leaders around the world, both among our friends and potential adversaries, are quite concerned,” he said. |
