Safety
Trump has spent the better years of his second term treating allied governments like freeloading tenants who should be grateful he hasn’t ch…
Trump has spent the better years of his second term treating allied governments like freeloading tenants who should be grateful he hasn’t changed the locks. The result, predictably, is that they’ve st
Trump has spent the better years of his second term treating allied governments like freeloading tenants who should be grateful he hasn’t changed the locks. The result, predictably, is that they’ve stopped waiting for the lease to expire and started buying their own buildings. What’s happening now is qualitatively different from the grumbling of 2017-2019. Back then, European leaders still believed the relationship was cyclical – that America would eventually sober up and the old architecture would reassemble itself. That belief is gone. Greenland changed everything. For ever. What replaced it are structural decisions: German rearmament on a scale not seen since before reunification, French-led European defence coordination that pointedly excludes Washington, South Korean quiet conversations about indigenous nuclear deterrence, Japanese defence spending hitting levels that would have been politically unthinkable five years ago. The crucial dynamic is that these shifts generate their own momentum. A German arms industry rebuilt to supply a European force doesn’t get mothballed when the next US president calls. A generation of European defence planners trained to operate without American command integration doesn’t unlearn that. Trade relationships rerouted through new corridors don’t spontaneously return to their old paths just because someone in Washington eventually extends an olive branch. Trump appears to have understood American power as a static asset – something you could spend down for short-term leverage without diminishing the underlying account. What his allies understood, and what he didn’t, is that the asset was always relational. The moment they stopped believing in it, the balance sheet changed permanently. The irony is almost classical. He wanted to make America’s allies pay more for American protection. Instead, he convinced them to stop needing it. President Trump’s abuse of America's allies has reached a tipping point. Now countries have started making long-term policy shifts — and those shifts will soon take on a life of their own. My take:
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Source: Yann LeCun (X) | 2026-04-26