Trump's NATO lunacy masks NATO's threat of nuclear war

Can you imagine this statement from Brit Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 2, 1939:
"We've considered sending aid to the beleaguered Poles under attack by Nazi Germany, but due to Poland's tardiness in paying for the common defense, we've decided to just wish them luck".

That scenario is precisely the logic employed by Donald Trump in stating NATO countries under Russian attack would get aid depending on their accounts payable status. But Trump's cluelessness about NATO distracts us from confronting the real issue how NATO endangers world peace by needlessly inflaming tensions with Russia.

Such tensions have been relentless for nearly 20 years now when the US and NATO allies reneged on their 1990 pledge not to expand NATO into Warsaw Pact countries after the Soviet Union collapsed. Since then, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Albania have all all been gobbed up by the NATO Pacman. Seven years later NATO reneged again, this time injecting military forces in former Warsaw Pact countries. Hey, if it involves Russia, any agreement to promote peace can be ignored if it furthers US re-igniting the Cold War. Just last month, NATO positioned 4 battalions in Romania and Poland, claiming they did not constitute 'significant' forces proscribed by NATO guidelines. In 1999, NATO unnecessarily intervened in the Yugoslav civil war resulting in carving out the new country of Kosovo from Serbian rule. In 2002, the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, in place since 1972, resulting in recent deployment of anti ballistic missile systems on Russia's doorstep in Poland and Romania. The Obama administration further exacerbated Russian fears of encirclement by greenlighting the February, 2014, coup in Ukraine, which tossed the duly elected Ukraine president simply because he did business with Russia. Another expressed reason for supporting the coup was to encourage regime change against Putin in Russia. No wonder 78% of Crimean legislators and 95% of Crimean voters opted to reunite with Russia. To top off US and NATO saber rattling, Obama is championing a $1 trillion upgrade of America's 7,000 nukes, an insane action that belies his calls to eliminate nuclear proliferation and stockpiles.

Russian President Putin has saved Americas' bacon in the Middle East twice recently; helping broker the Iran Nuclear Agreement and assisting the US to resolve the Syrian crisis without resort to war. Yet NATO pays back Russia with endless provocation which could easily spin out of control into nuclear war. Such a powder keg is no place to install a foreign policy imbecile like Trump who views even the life and death matters of foreign policy tripwires as a version of Monopoly where the player with the most money at the bell wins. Under Trump, that bell could easily be nuclear Armageddon.a