Kim Hjelmgaard

USA TODAY

Donald Trump suggested in an interview that he would set conditions before aiding NATO allies, while touting a foreign policy that would see the United States "fix our own mess" before intervening to help other countries.

Trump said that if Russia were to attack the Baltic States — new NATO members friendly with the West that Moscow views as a threat — he would decide whether to come to their aid after assessing how those nations "have fulfilled their obligations to us." He characterized these obligations in mostly economic terms.

He spoke to The New York Times ahead of his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night in Cleveland. Trump told the newspaper he would make international partners contribute more to defense costs, pull out of treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if they don't meet U.S. interests, plus redraw the terms of long-held global cooperation.

He said he would "prefer to be able to continue" with existing agreements but on specific terms: “We are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everyone else in the world.”

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Trump expressed approval of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's handling of a recent coup attempt, despite growing international concerns that Turkey's democratically elected leader may be using the subsequent political purge to strengthen his power and erode the country's democratic tradition.

Trump said he didn't think the United States was in a position to take the moral high ground with its allies. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”

“I give great credit to him for being able to turn that around,” Trump said of Erdogan for quelling Friday's coup attempt. “Some people say that it was staged, you know that,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Trump said he was certain that he would be able to persuade the Turkish leader to increase his efforts to fight the Islamic State in neighboring Syria. When asked how, specifically, he woulddo that when Turkey is almost daily attacking Kurdish groups — seen by President Obama's administration as the most effective tool to counter the Islamic State — Trump said, "Meetings."

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Hillary Clinton's campaign released a statement after publication of the remarks.

"For decades, the United States has given an ironclad guarantee to our NATO allies: we will come to their defense if they are attacked, just as they came to our defense after 9/11. Donald Trump was asked if he would honor that guarantee. He said ... maybe, maybe not."

The statement added: "Ronald Reagan would be ashamed. Harry Truman would be ashamed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who helped build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our Commander in Chief."