Trump is hellbent on destroying the Nato alliance
Trump is hellbent on destroying the Nato alliance | Martin Kettle
In the words of
Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” For more than 70 years, Europe has had a plan. It was to hold together against Russia and rely on the alliance with the United States. Now Europe has been punched in the mouth by Donald Trump. Europeans must therefore ask themselves the question: has Trump’s US become a hostile power? If the answer to that question is yes, the consequences for Europe – and for Britain – would be enormous. That’s why so many policymakers and politicians prefer not to ask it.
But as
Der Spiegel put it last month: “The west as we once knew it no longer exists.” Even the Washington-based
German Marshall Fund, a bastion of postwar Atlanticism, now talks about Trump’s “overt hostility”. Incredible as it may seem to those who grew up in a Europe and a Britain that took the US alliance for granted, the plan that has worked since the fall of Hitler can no longer be relied upon.