The USA is Trump's Now, Europe Must Get Ready

All things come to an end, perhaps even NATO

Hi All,

Well in the end the polls hadn’t “narrowed.” Trump was surging and, whatever you think of the man, he is now going to become President of the USA (again) with a clear majority in the Senate and possibly the House. There will be plenty of time for the moaning and blame game later. Right now, Europe has no time for that—as this is what it is facing in a few weeks.

This is what Europe is facing in a few weeks.

We should pay Trump the compliment of believing what he says when he speaks about NATO and Ukraine—and indeed what those who worked closely with him say about that. There is a very good chance that the North Atlantic Alliance, which has dominated much of the globe since 1949, will become dysfunctional in fewer than 3 months. Trump doesn’t have to withdraw from the alliance to do that—all he has to do is remove the US from the military command (which is what De Gaulle did with French forces in 1966). As commander in chief, US forces will only fight if Trump orders them to do so—NATO cannot order US forces into action if the President doesnt want that. So, no US forces will fight to protect Europe if Trump doesnt want them to.

Btw—this also needs to be faced by the USA’s allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even Australia, who can no longer look for the USA to be a reliable partner in defense.

Now, I’m sure many European leaders will tell themselves in the coming weeks that they can win Trump over, sweet talk him, pump up his inflated ego, etc etc. Maybe they can—but also maybe they can’t. And this is the rub. Until a few hours ago they could (and believe me they did) comfort themselves that any such charm offensive was possibly/probably unnecessary. In fact, I know they were saying, Harris was in the lead, so really this nightmare will almost certainly not come to pass.

Well it has.

Europe cant keep pretending that things will go on as before (nor should it).