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Q&A: Bob Carr Is Worried About Australia's Nuclear Weapons Agreements Under A President Trump

'He hasn't been able to finish one day without anger.'
Bob Carr said Trump is dominated by fury.
ABC
Bob Carr said Trump is dominated by fury.

Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr is "very worried" for Australia's military and political alliance with the United States if Donald Trump wins the U.S Presidency.

On Monday's Q&A program, Carr warned Australians Trump's inability to control his anger would work to Australia's detriment around issues of nuclear warfare and military alliances.

"The thing that worries me about Donald Trump and the nuclear trigger, is that [Trump] is someone who is dominated by anger. He hasn't been able to finish one day without anger," Carr said on Monday night.

The former Foreign Minister said Trump's suggestions that Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should have access to their own nuclear weapons "unravel" security arrangements in the Asia Pacific region, which Australia is a part of under the ANZUS treaty.

"We'd be in the peculiar position, as Australians -- an ally and treaty partner of the United States -- of watching a President Trump unravel arrangements that have been considered vital to avoiding nuclear exchanges in the region in which we live and it would really challenge us."

Carr said withdrawing nuclear protection from Japan and South Korea would compel the countries to acquire their own weapons.

"I would be very uncomfortable if we had a warship on rotation next to ships of the American fleet in Japanese waters under a President Trump. "

However, he urged Australians to have confidence in American voters, comparing Trump's ascension to the rise and fall of Clive Palmer.

"The public looked at [Palmer], the public was entertained for a period and then the public dropped him," he said.

The former Foreign Minister wasn't the only concerned panellist on Monday night. US intelligence analyst Lydia Khalil said Carr's concern "highlights how dangerous Donald Trump has already become".

"He has already opened up this conversation. This sacrosanct relationship between America and Australia and its key allies, now everything is being thrown into question," Khalil, an expert in US national security and Middle East intelligence, said on the program.

"So it's gone beyond a joke right now. It's actually gone into the danger zone.

"The reality is [Trump] has no position. He has no articulated position on anything. That's what makes him so risky."

"I think win or lose he's already kind of set us back on that international and national security front just by the nature of what he's putting out there."

Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

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