Republican foreign policy veterans and outside experts warned that the suggestion by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that he might abandon NATO's pledge to automatically defend all alliance members could destroy an organization that has helped keep the peace for 66 years and could invite Russian aggression.
"Statements like these make the world more dangerous and the United States less safe," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump critic who is one of the Republican Party's leading foreign policy voices and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
"I can only imagine how our allies in NATO, particularly the Baltic states, must feel after reading these comments from Mr. Trump. I'm 100 percent certain how Russian President Putin feels — he's a very happy man," he said.