Carl P. Leubsdorf
Last July, at gala ceremonies in Washington, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated the 75th birthday of what President Joe Biden hailed as “the single, most effective defense alliance in the history of the world.”
Seven months and one election later, a new American president has undercut that alliance’s major pillars, abruptly withdrawing a decades-long guarantee of U.S. support for its 31 European partners and cozying up instead to its principal adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Though Trump was cool to NATO in his first term, the words and actions by the new president and other top administration officials over the past two weeks have stunned the pact’s longtime American allies and even stirred some sporadic criticism from Trump’s normally docile fellow Republicans.
Keynoting the stunning U.S. reversal, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned fellow NATO members the administration intends to empower Europe “to own responsibility for its own security,” signaling a forthcoming withdrawal of some of the nearly 100,000 U.S. troops currently on the continent.
Hegseth warned Ukraine that returning to pre-war borders is “an unrealistic objective” and that the United States does not regard NATO membership for the embattled nation as “a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” thus weakening its negotiating position before peace talks with Russia.
But the most devastating moment came when Trump, inexplicably and without evidence, accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of starting the war that in fact began with Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of its one time fellow Soviet republic.
“You should have never started it,” he said, adding that, in the last three years, “You could have made a deal.” In subsequent days, Trump kept up a drumbeat of criticism against Zelenskyy, calling him “a dictator without elections” while refusing to say anything similarly critical of Putin.
On Monday, the United States voted with Russia and its fellow dictatorships against a Ukraine-sponsored United Nations resolution calling for immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and condemning its 2022 invasion.
It’s been the most embarrassing performance by an American president on the world stage in memory, comparable only to Trump’s 2018 statement after meeting Putin in Helsinki that he believed the Russian president’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election over the word of U.S. intelligence agencies.
It reflects Trump’s long standing enmity toward Zelenskyy, stemming in part from his 2019 refusal to bow to the president’s pressure to probe unproven allegations against Joe Biden. That prompted House Democrats to impeach Trump.
Trump’s stance threatens to end decades in which a unified U.S.-led Western alliance stared down the Soviet Union and opposed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It can only weaken the Western nations and lower respect for the United States as the world’s preeminent democracy.
It also shows the degree to which the re-elected president no longer feels tethered by past international policies and longtime American alliances, just as he feels unrestrained at home by the laws and processes reflecting the Constitution’s balance of power.
Meanwhile, after announcing he would meet Putin to settle the Ukrainian conflict without either European or Ukrainian participation, the Trump administration has been pressuring Ukraine to hand the United States half the income from its valuable mineral resources, allegedly to repay military and economic aid since 2022.
Other officials sounded similar warnings.
Hegseth sent the first blunt signal when, addressing a Feb. 13 NATO meeting in Brussels, he said that, while remaining “committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe,” the United States “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.
“Rather,” he said, “our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.” He said European nations, not the United States, should supply any troops to guarantee a peace agreement in Ukraine and added that any subsequent attack on them would not be covered by Article 5 by which all NATO members including the United States agree to aid a fellow member that is attacked.
Then, Vice President JD Vance, in his first major speech since assuming the country’s second office, further stunned Europeans with a lecture that the greatest threat they face is not from Russia or China but “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference, he decried efforts by democratic governments to limit the role of parties representing populist movements, singling out Germany’s leaders for refusing to allow the far-right AFD party to participate in coalition governments.
“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” Vance said. “There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.” He then met with leaders of the party that critics have labeled as neo-Nazi and has displayed Nazi symbols at its rallies.
The combined impact of the Hegseth and Vance speeches and Trump’s comments inspired French President Emmanuel Macron to call a meeting in Paris of fellow European leaders to discuss their role in protecting any Ukrainian peace treaty. And Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are making clear Europe’s intentions in Washington meetings this week with Trump.
But there is no substitute for the U.S. leadership that has protected Europe the past 80 years. While the new administration’s leaders talk of renewing American strength, their recent acts and speeches can only make the Western world weaker.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at [email protected].
