Dangerous Rift Between U.S. And It's Allies Is Growing

(Cartoon image is by Nikola Listes at cagle.com.)

Donald Trump has made the world a much more dangerous place. He did it by ignoring our intelligence community, embracing Putin and other dictators, and by attacking our best allies -- allies we have depended on in the past, and who depend on us. At first, those allies tried to be patient, and bent over backwards to get along with Trump.

Unfortunately, that didn't work -- our allies now know they can no longer trust or depend on the U.S. (at least not as long as Trump is president). The rift is growing, and that makes the world a much more dangerous place for everyone.

Here is part of an excellent article by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold on the rift in The New York Times:

European leaders have long been alarmed that President Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades. They had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain.

But in the last few days of a prestigious annual security conference in Munich, the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete, diplomats and analysts say.

A senior German official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on such matters, shrugged his shoulders and said: “No one any longer believes that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It’s broken.”

The most immediate danger, diplomats and intelligence officials warned, is that the trans-Atlantic fissures now risk being exploited by Russia and China.

Even the normally gloomy Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, happily noted the strains, remarking that the Euro-Atlantic relationship had become increasingly “tense.”

“We see new cracks forming, and old cracks deepening,” Mr. Lavrov said.

The Europeans no longer believe that Washington will change, not when Mr. Trump sees traditional allies as economic rivals and leadership as diktat. His distaste for multilateralism and international cooperation is a challenge to the very heart of what Europe is and needs to be in order to have an impact in the world.

But beyond the Trump administration, an increasing number of Europeans say they believe that relations with the United States will never be the same again.

Karl Kaiser, a longtime analyst of German-American relations, said, “Two years of Mr. Trump, and a majority of French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United States.”