NYT: Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views. [archive] “We’re going to be friendly with everybody, but we’re not going to be taken advantage of by anybody.”

The US can no longer afford to defend the world:

Every time North Korea raises its head, you know, we get calls from Japan and we get calls from everybody else, and “Do something.” And there’ll be a point at which we’re just not going to be able to do it anymore. . . . We were a rich country with a very strong military and tremendous capability in so many ways. We’re not anymore. . . .

At some point, we cannot be the policeman of the world. . . .

One of the reasons we’re a debtor nation, we spend so much on the military, but the military isn’t for us. The military is to be policeman for other countries. And to watch over other countries. . . . And many of these countries are tremendously rich countries.

To deal with ISIS, the US should not only hit their oil, but also their banking channels:

I’ve said, hit the banking channels. . . . We should have stopped those banking channels long ago and I think we’ve done nothing to stop them . . . And money is coming in from people that we think are our allies.

The US should stop paying a disproportionate amount of money for NATO:

NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share. . . . You notice I talk about economics quite a bit, in these military situations, because it is about economics, because we don’t have money anymore because we’ve been taking care of so many people in so many different forms that we don’t have money . . . Why is it always the United States that gets right in the middle of things, with something that – you know, it affects us, but not nearly as much as it affects other countries.

The US needs less predictable tactics (context: a discussion about China):

That’s the problem with our country. A politician would say, ‘Oh I would never go to war,’ or they’d say, ‘Oh I would go to war.’ I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability. You know, if I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’ve said I would or I wouldn’t. I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking. The problem we have is that, maybe because it’s a democracy and maybe because we have to be so open – maybe because you have to say what you have to say in order to get elected – who knows? But I wouldn’t want to say. I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is. But I will tell you this. This is the one aspect I can tell you. I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.

Trump gives an update on his foreign policy advisers:

We have some others that I really like a lot and we’re going to put them in. Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell. Maj. Gen. Bert Mizusawa. . . . Rear Adm. Chuck Kubic. . . . People that I respect recommended them. . . . I’ve heard very good things about them. . . . We’re going to be adding some additional names that I’ve liked over the years.

The standard for US foreign policy is national security:

It sounds nice to say, “I have a blanket standard; here’s what it is.” Number one is the protection of our country, O.K.? That’s always going to be number one, by far. That’s by a factor of a hundred. But you know, then there will be standards for other places but it won’t be a blanket standard. . . . The one blanket you could say is, “protection of our country.” That’s the one blanket. After that it depends on the country, the region, how friendly they’ve been toward us.

Earlier: Trump reveals foreign policy team.

Also earlier: The Trump doctrine revealed.