Trump wanted to ally with Russia against Pakistan, France decades ago

Concerned about nuclear terrorism, Donald Trump once proposed allying with Russia against France and Pakistan.

In an interview with journalist Ron Rosenbaum in 1987, Trump said instead of competing with Russia, the US should team up with the Soviet Union to prevent the rest of the world from developing nuclear weapons.



Blaming French for the proliferation of nuclear weapons Trump said, “I believe they’re sort of fools…They only think about Russia. Russian and US weapons. You have countries like France that are openly and blatantly selling nuclear technology.”

Trump proposed economic sanctions to dissuade ‘fragile countries’ from developing weapons. “I think you have to come down on them very hard economically or whatever way,” Trump says. “I think the solution is largely economic. Because there are so many of these countries that are so fragile and we have a vast power that’s never been used. They depend on us for food, for medical supplies. And I would never even suggest using it except on this issue. But this issue supersedes all other things.”

Highlighting that the US and the Soviet Union dominated most of the ‘pre-nuclear’ countries Trump proposed blocking these countries from nuclear technology by ‘whatever means necessary.’ “Most of those [pre-nuclear] countries are in one form or another dominated by the US and the Soviet Union,” he said.

“Between those two nations you have the power to dominate any of those countries. So we should use our power of economic retaliation and they use their powers of retaliation and between the two of us we will prevent the problem from happening. It would have been better having done something five years ago,” he adds.



“But I believe even a country such as Pakistan would have to do something now. Five years from now they’ll laugh.”

“You do whatever is necessary so these people will have riots in the street, so they can’t get water. So they can’t get Band-Aids, so they can’t get food. Because that’s the only thing that’s going to do it—the people, the riots.”

When questioned about how France should be stopped he said,  “I’d come down on them so hard.”

“If they didn’t give it up… and I don’t mean reduce it, and I don’t mean stop, because stopping doesn’t mean anything. I mean get it out. If they didn’t, I would bring sanctions against that country that would be so strong, so unbelievable.”

This article originally appeared on Vox.