Sale of American Military Capabilities if Trump Comes to Power

Donald Trump, the controversial American businessman, who at the beginning of the announcement of presidential candidates had a lower chance of winning than the small and surprising football team Leicester City in England overcoming giants like Manchester United, Arsenal, and Manchester City in the Premier League, is now only waiting for the Republican Party's convention on July 18 in Cleveland, Ohio, to be introduced as the official candidate. If Trump and Hillary Clinton are nominated as the final candidates of the two major parties in the U.S., their electoral debates, especially regarding global relations and foreign policy, will dominate headlines in many news media in the days and weeks leading up to November 20. With Ms. Clinton, U.S. foreign policy may continue the status quo with slight behavioral but not structural changes. If Donald Trump is elected, if he pursues even a portion of his unconventional views, not only U.S. foreign relations but also the international relations scene will witness changes comparable to the transformations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which American theorist Francis Fukuyama introduced in his famous book "The End of History" (and the Last Man). At the beginning of the new century, known neoconservatives of the Republican Party like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz, the theorist and designer of the "Bush Doctrine," directed U.S. foreign and defense policies in a different path than before, creating earthquakes in the global scene, especially in the Middle East from South Asia to North Africa, the aftershocks of which are still being experienced by Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and countries associated with the "Arab Spring" like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and Bahrain. With Donald Trump, whose political-security team has not yet been completed or introduced and is not well known except for a recent case (Senator Corker), regional security issues, global peace, U.S. bilateral relations, NATO, nuclear disarmament, and terrorism must be placed in new equations, with expectations of waves far larger than those created by neoconservatives with George Bush on the global scene. About a month and a half before the Indiana elections and with Trump remaining unchallenged in the Republican Party's internal elections, he claimed during two interviews summarized by the New York Times on March 26: "If (the Kingdom of) Saudi Arabia did not have the cloak (umbrella) of U.S. support, I don't believe it would survive." In a theory that is completely contrary to the established U.S. policy on nuclear proliferation, Trump noted: "As President of the United States, I see it as feasible to allow Japan and South Korea to have their own nuclear weapons for self-defense against China and North Korea instead of being under the U.S. nuclear umbrella." In the same interview, Trump pointed out that if the current weakness of the U.S. on the international stage continues, these two countries may even want to move towards this option (producing nuclear weapons) without consulting us. Trump believes that if countries like Japan and South Korea do not significantly increase their defense cost contributions to the U.S., we should consider recalling our forces. Trump claims that America has become a "diluted power" and must regain its natural power on the global stage. In addition to the necessity of showing power against enemies, including the promise to quickly overthrow ISIS using all available resources, Trump claims that with friends, we must also act based on reciprocity and equality: if America's allied countries want to benefit from our support, they must pay the costs. Regarding Iran, Donald Trump had previously noted that American parties should have left the nuclear negotiation table during the "excessive demands" of the Islamic Republic. In a view contrary to the intervention of religion in politics, which some Islamic intellectuals may present as Trump's opposition to Islam, his approach to the nature of the Islamic Republic in Iran and creating facilities to guide it towards the global community differs from Obama's policies. Trump believes that to limit the military and nuclear efforts of the Islamic Republic, trade and exchanges between Iran and North Korea should be completely banned and stopped. The joining of influential Republican Senator and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, who is a serious critic of the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran and one of the main architects of sanctions against Iran, to Trump's foreign policy team could clarify his future positions regarding the Islamic Republic if he potentially reaches the White House. Bob Corker has accused the Obama administration and its foreign policy advisors, including Ben Rhodes of the National Security Council, of "repeated lies" to pass the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic. Senator Corker, calling Trump's foreign policy perspective "pragmatic" and "realistic" and comparing him to George Bush (the younger), introduced himself on Friday, April 7, as ready to cooperate with Trump in managing his foreign relations. Trump says, "I am not an isolationist, but I put America first - and I like this slogan." He states that he is ready to review America's alliances with friendly countries, provided that our allies either contribute more military personnel or pay for the costs of our military presence in the world - he says, "I will not let us be taken advantage of anymore!" Currently, America has about 150,000 military personnel in 150 countries around the world. The deployment of an equipped military force including 24,000 to 28,500 personnel in South Korea and a larger military equipped with nuclear weapons numbering 54,000 personnel in Japan are among these forces. American forces stationed in NATO are spread across almost all member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Germany, which hosts about 36,000 American troops. American forces stationed in Southeast Asia are remnants of the wars of the 1950s, and the forces stationed in Europe are considered leftovers from the Cold War, which effectively ended with the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, replaced by a new order managing the bipolar world.