Say what you will about Donald Trump: While he may have only ever had a handful of ideas, he’s been consistent about espousing them for more than half a century. Take, for instance, his view that America’s allies are a bunch of freeloaders who should be paying the U.S. protection money for defending them. The way he’s always seen it, the collective security umbrella that has existed since World War II is nothing more than a business arrangement that should be turning America a profit.
In 1987 he even took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to make his case. He said, “It’s time for us to end our vast deficits by making Japan, and others who can afford it, pay. Our world protection is worth hundreds of billions of dollars to these countries, and their stake in their protection is far greater than ours.”
