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    Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade

    For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More

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    Trump is creating a selfish, miserable world. Here’s what we can do | Michael Plant

    In case you hadn’t noticed, things have not been going well for the west.In just three months, Donald Trump has started trade wars, crippled Nato, dismantled USAID and humiliated an invaded democracy while praising its aggressor, among other things. We still have 45 months to go. Through his antics, the US president is normalizing, even encouraging, intense selfishness and disregard for others. The clearest example is USAID: if the richest, most powerful country in the world thinks it’s a waste to give a tiny fraction of its income to the poorest, worst off people in the world, you must be a real sucker if you care for others.This comes on top of a longer trend of declining western happiness and disconnection. In 2012, the United States ranked 11th in the World Happiness Report. This year, it was 24th. In 2023, one in four Americans reported eating all their meals alone. That figure has risen 53% in just two decades.These short- and long-term trends are no coincidence. New research shows that unhappy people vote for populists, those who promise to rip the system apart. Importantly, it also finds that trust explains which type of populists unhappy people support: low-trust people vote for far-right parties, whereas high-trust people go far left. Therefore, we should see Trumpism as both a symptom of a lower-trust, lower-happiness society and a cause of further misery and mistrust.But what should you do if you don’t like the way the world is going? Is there anything you can do?The obvious answer is to rage, doomscroll and hope for the next election. But the obvious answer is no longer an option once we realize the antidote to Trump is to build a happier, higher trust society. Drawing on my dual experience as a moral philosopher and happiness researcher, I’d like to suggest some alternative ways you can fight back.Trumpism is built on pettiness and self-interest, so resisting means embodying the opposite virtues. To paraphrase a much better president: do not ask what the world can do for your happiness – ask what you can do for the happiness of the world. You commit yourself to making the biggest difference you can – even when others do not.It starts internally. Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher born a Roman slave, wrote: “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” That idea, now a pillar of modern psychotherapy, is especially relevant in moments like this. Trump and co want to make you feel helpless and furious. Keeping your composure and finding joy are acts of resistance.It continues locally. Make an effort to build social connections where you live. Research shows when we share meals with others, volunteer or strike up friendly conversations with strangers, we’re not just making ourselves and others happier. We’re rebuilding the social fabric that authoritarian politics tears apart and reducing the distrust that fuels politicians like Trump. Higher trust and happiness make us less susceptible to the politics of fear and resentment; the data backs this up.Some good news is that our perceptions of mistrust are misplaced. There have been global studies in which researchers drop wallets to see what percentage is returned. A 40-country study found actual wallet return rates are about twice as high as people expected. In the US, two-thirds were returned – against the view that one-third would be. Simply recognizing we can trust others more than we thought is a helpful step forward. You could join a local Action for Happiness group. Recent research even shows prosocial activity is reliably linked to fewer “deaths of despair”. Your kindness could save lives.At the national level, we need to see politicians taking social connection – not just the economy – more seriously. If it seems fluffy or unimportant, look at where ignoring them has got us: he’s in the Oval Office. Academics are starting to assess policies by their “bang for buck” at improving wellbeing: economists at the London School of Economics published a first, milestone review in 2024. Policy nerds should take notice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt ends globally. My colleagues and I at the Happier Lives Institute recently published the first global analysis of how much happiness different charities produce per dollar. We found a striking result. The most effective charities – often tackling issues such as depression or malnutrition in low-income countries – have about 150 times the impact of the average rich-country charity. If someone gave $150,000 to charity, you would consider them a hero. It turns out you can do as much good by giving $1,000 – if you follow the evidence and pick wisely. Giving 1% of your income to these organizations is a quiet act of moral clarity in a noisy, self-interested world.Fighting back doesn’t have to mean shouting louder. Another option is gracious, determined decency. Choose kindness over cruelty, generosity over selfishness, and evidence over bluster. Today, these quiet choices are acts of radical courage – ones that help build a better tomorrow. They might even make you happier, too.What’s giving me hopeTrumpism is the symptom of a less happy, less trusting society. But we are far from powerless to change this. There are several ways we can each make a difference – starting with our own minds and local communities and finishing with helping others around the world. What gives me hope is realizing we have the potential to understand what’s going wrong in our society and do our part to improve it.

    Michael Plant is the founder and research director of the Happier Lives Institute. He is a global happiness researcher and post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which publishes the annual World Happiness Report More

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    Now is not the time for the US or Europe to go it alone, warns Nato chief

    Nato’s secretary general has told the US and Europe it is “not the time to go it alone” amid reports that Washington and some European leaders want to weaken their commitments to the transatlantic military alliance.Mark Rutte said in a speech in Warsaw that the US needed to be told that European countries would “step up” and lift their defence spending – while they needed to hear that Washington would not abandon them.“Let me be absolutely clear, this is not the time to go it alone. Not for Europe or North America,” said the Dutch head of the alliance. “The global security challenges are too great for any of us to face on our own. When it comes to keeping Europe and North America safe, there is no alternative to Nato.”Europe “needs to know that Uncle Sam still has our back”, Rutte continued, but in turn “America also needs to know that its Nato allies will step up. Without restrictions and without capability gaps” because “reassurance is a two-way street”.The 76-year-old alliance has come under intense pressure following the election of Donald Trump, most recently with key administration members complaining about European defence “free-loading” in a confidential chat on the Signal app that leaked when a journalist from the Atlantic was added to the group by mistake.On his first trip to Europe earlier this year, Pete Hegseth, the new defence secretary, said the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security and signalled that cuts to the number of American troops in Europe were a possibility.Since then, some reports had suggested that the US was willing to relinquish its hold on the position of Nato’s top military commander, the supreme allied commander Europe (Saceur), a position first held by Dwight Eisenhower and currently held by Gen Christopher Cavoli, whose tour expires in the summer.One Nato source said that idea had been dropped. A second said the UK was particularly keen to ensure the US remains inside the alliance at a time when any sustained end to the fighting in Ukraine could allow Russia to distribute 600,000 troops elsewhere along member states’ eastern flank.On Friday last week, Trump himself appeared to dismiss the speculation. When asked directly about the US being prepared to give up the top military command, he replied that the alliance was “gone until I came along” before praising Rutte, his predecessor and European members for increasing defence spending.“Nato is solid, is strong but they have to treat us fairly,” the US president added.Another report suggested Europe’s leading military powers wanted to devise a plan to shift the financial and military burden to European capitals over the next five to 10 years and present it to the US, amid worries about whether Washington would come to the defence of Europe in a crisis.However, this idea was dismissed by British sources who argued that the idea that the US contribution to European security could be replaced in five years or so was “living in cloud cuckoo land”.Rutte said he recognised that “the US commitment to Nato comes with a clear expectation” and “that European allies and Canada take more responsibility for our shared security”. He said he would work towards developing this at the next leaders’ summit in The Hague in June.Nato members have begun to announce some increases in defence spending, with the UK promising to lift its budget from 2.33% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027, starting with an extra £2.2bn next year. Germany has agreed to loosen its debt rules to allow for additional spending on defence under the incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz. More

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    After America: can Europe learn to go it alone without the US?

    The German ­electronics firm Hensoldt has a backlog of orders for its technology, ­including radars that protect Ukraine from Russian airstrikes. Meanwhile, Germany’s car industry is struggling with low European demand and competition from China.As Europe worries about how it can weather the economic and ­political turmoil unleashed by Donald Trump, executives from Munich and Düsseldorf say they have at least a partial answer.In January, Hensoldt offered to take on workers laid off by the car parts suppliers Bosch and Continental. The defence giant Rheinmetall made a similar ­proposal last year, and in February announced it would repurpose two automotive component factories.It was a pivot that offered hope amid America’s rapid ­dismantling of the postwar global order – ­protecting jobs and Germany’s industrial base as access to US ­markets shrinks, while ramping up Europe’s capacity to protect itself.As politicians around the world try to work out how best to ­protect their countries from Trump’s ­capricious policymaking, the one constant in all their calculations for the future is a diminished American role in their countries. Trump has mooted plans for a 25% tariff on EU goods, including cars, and has already put duties at that level on steel and aluminium from the bloc.In February, his vice-president, JD Vance, launched a blistering attack on European democracy in Munich, questioning whether it was worth defending.In his first term, Trump touted decoupling from China as a way to bolster US jobs and the economy against a rapacious rival. Now, in his second term, he is pursuing a much broader decoupling from the ­country’s historical allies – a shift that few had anticipated or were prepared to face.The new US administration is sealing off its markets, retreating from America’s global security role, and cutting soft-power projects that aimed to shape the world through research, aid and culture.The only form of greater American presence beyond the country’s ­current borders that seems to ­interest Trump is ­territorial ­expansion – ­encouraging, ­perhaps, for a dictator such as Vladimir Putin as he wages an ­imperial war in Ukraine, but ­unwelcome and ­alarming elsewhere.“The idea of the US ­abandoning western Europe was ­unimaginable even a decade ago, because its role there also secures broader American influence in the world,” said Phillip Ayoub, a professor of international relations at University College London.“There is a comparative ­advantage to strong alliances because they make you richer in trade and safer because they deter other powers.”Trump’s vision of the world rejects that view, casting his ­country as a naively magnanimous ­superpower that has for decades funded and policed the world while getting little more than debt and ingratitude for its troubles.View image in fullscreenYet if postwar American ­presidents did not pursue the ­territorial empire that Trump now dreams of, they wielded an ­imperial power not reflected on maps. Decisions made in Washington DC reshaped countries from Chile to Iraq without the participation or consent of their populations.And the global order he is ­tearing down made the country so rich and powerful that for a brief, heady moment around the turn of the ­millennium, the US elite embraced the idea that history was over, and that human society had reached its peak and permanent form in the ­liberal democracy embodied in their constitution.The details of the new American relationship with the world are still being worked out day by day in court battles at home and trade and diplomatic negotiations abroad, but the impact of Trump’s presidency will last long into the future.“An election could change ­policy in Washington DC. But the new ­reality is that from government to government you could have a ­different attitude to the US’s place in the world,” Ayoub said. “This retreat will be factored into policymaking everywhere now.”For now, the ­immediate priority in most ­countries is limiting the extent of tariffs and the impact of US cuts, in areas ranging from aid to defence.Geography and the impact of ­previous free trade deals have ­combined to make neighbours of the US extremely vulnerable to its tariffs. Exports to the US account for a quarter of Mexico’s GDP. In Canada, where all other potential trading partners are an ocean or half a continent away, they are about a fifth of GDP.European countries may be less immediately vulnerable to a trade squeeze, with exports to the US accounting for less than 3% of the European Union’s GDP.But budgets from London to Warsaw are also strained by the need to ramp up defence ­spending to make up for the US retreat, both from immediate support for the Ukrainian forces battling Russia, and from the longer-term backing of European defence. Even ­optimistic assessments suggest it will take the best part of a decade before the continent’s own defence ­capacity can match the protection currently offered by the US, excluding its nuclear deterrent.The pain of breaking up or reshaping major relationships does not only fall on one party – ­something even Trump has ­admitted. The cost of some tariffs will be passed on to US ­consumers, and American businesses may lose customers.One early high-profile casualty could be Lockheed Martin, which produces F-35 jet fighters. Contracts allowing the US to restrict how the planes are used by allies caused little debate during friendlier times. Now, in Berlin and other capitals, defence ministers are worrying about a ­possible “kill switch” and hesitating over major new orders.Longer term, Trump could also fuel a ­cultural “decoupling”, with attacks on the arts and academia ­driving highly talented ­individuals to flee the US or avoid it.Several artists have cancelled tours, and the concert pianist András Schiff last week said last week he would no longer work in the US because of Trump. He had already boycotted Russia.Academics at elite British ­universities say they have seen a surge in job applications from US-based colleagues, many ­willing to lose tenure and take a ­considerable pay cut in order to move across the Atlantic. A French university that offered ­“sanctuary” to US researchers said it had received 40 applications, and one academic moved this month.As with the economy, the US’s ­cultural standing is not under direct threat. American music – much of it made by ­people who publicly oppose Trump – will be consumed worldwide. The Oscars are likely to remain the most ­coveted prize for cinema, the Emmys for ­television, the Pulitzers for ­journalism. Yet an exodus would still be ­damaging in a country where research and the creative arts are key drivers of growth, and benefit the places they settle instead – the long-term US allies that Trump sees as threats.The US president has promised voters that where his economic policies cause pain it will be short-term, and pave the way for long term prosperity in America.To critics, they look like a ­template for a poorer, more ­dangerous and fragmented world, where any limited benefits of ­decoupling are as likely to be reaped by a British university or a German defence firm as by Americans.View image in fullscreenCultureThe hit to America’s creative ­sector, from budget freezes and threats to the federal bodies and national schemes that fund ­museums, ­galleries, theatres and libraries, is set to take a toll on its income from tourism – and send visitors to Britain and Europe instead.In response to the second Trump presidency, some international ­artists are already pulling out of ­appearances in American venues, or at music festivals, and the likely knock-on effect is a reduction in ­visits from abroad.Last week, the Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Hudson cancelled her American tour, saying on social media: “Like a lot of Canadians, and so many others, I no longer feel safe to enter the country.” The German violinist Christian Tetzlaff cancelled a spring tour in protest at the new administration’s policies, with particular reference to Ukraine.In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the managing director of City theatre, James McNeel, has ­spoken of a growing funding threat. “What we need more than anything is stability,” he says.Prior to the pandemic, the US Travel Association ­valued the total spending of the near-80 million tourists who came into the US at about $2 trillion (£1.5tn).This was supported by federal investment in ­infrastructure and the ­airline industry, but travel experts also traced back much of this tourism success to the diverse image of many of its cities. Art tourism was a big part of this, with art fans who ­travelled to North America in 2023 ­accounting for more than a ­quarter of the global total. Cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago boast ­celebrated museums and ­galleries, and the rise of immersive art and public installations has broadened this appeal. The attraction of art fairs such as Art Basel Miami has also grown internationally. In 2023, it was reportedly visited by more than 79,000 people.But Trump has made rapid and determined cuts to all museum ­projects tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, ­affecting the Smithsonian Institution, which has closed its DEI office. The National Gallery of Art also closed its office of belonging and inclusion, while exhibitions across the ­country have been cancelled. The biggest impact may well be on cultural ­tourism associated with LGBTQ+ communities and climate activism.Trump at one point intended for 2026 to be a bumper year for American tourism, with a ­“special one-time festival” planned for “­millions of people from around the world” at the Iowa State Fairground to mark 250 years since ­independence.The level of ­international advance booking will be watched.Likewise, a new status for London, Berlin and Paris as “refuge cities” for American artists is being predicted.British and European ­institutions might also soon have to make room for American artwork. The Washington Post has reported that large collections of public art have been left without professional ­security or conservationists.View image in fullscreenEconomicsShould the UK government decide to untangle the economy’s many ties with the US, it would need to tread carefully. America is the single ­largest market for Britain’s exports, ranging from the most sophisticated components in US navy submarines to artisan scented candles.Official figures show total trade in goods and services – exports plus imports – between Britain and the US was £294bn in the year to 30 September, 2024. The stock of investment by US companies in the UK stood at £708bn in 2023, or 34% of total of foreign direct investment.Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is hoping to sign a limited trade deal with his counterparts in Washington that covers digital services and commits both countries to secure supply chains for vital goods.But a deal with any scope or ­judicial oversight will need Congress to agree, and that is far from certain to happen.UK manufacturers could begin to wean themselves off US raw ­materials and components, but the presumption must be that they traded with the Americans in the first place because they provided the best products. Exports could be directed back at the EU, though without rejoining the single ­market and customs union, the benefit would be limited.It would be a harder job switching services exports away from the US. The common language may often divide the two nations, but in ­practice the sector is a huge boon.In Brussels, officials believe any kind of trade deal with the US is off the agenda.As Donald Trump is only too well aware, the EU has a large trade ­surplus with America. In 2014 the surplus was about €100bn. By last year the gap had grown to almost €200bn. For this reason, the EU has already adopted a more ­confrontational stance.The British Chambers of Commerce says almost two-thirds of factory owners that export to the US are worried. European ­manufacturers have revealed similar concerns in recent surveys.Some are comforted by figures showing the US has a trade surplus in goods with the UK and how, in practice, trade and investment relationships exist well away from the White House and remain robust.However, businesses thought the same about Brussels after the vote to leave the EU. It didn’t happen and a breakdown in relations ensued.That said, rekindling relations with the EU can be part of the answer. Reset talks are under way and there is a leaders’ summit on 19 May that should address at least some trade barriers. The UK might find that food exports become easier and it gains access to a wider range of raw ­materials and ­components by rejoining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention.Still, the US will remain a major trading partner and upsetting the Trump White House could have huge consequences.View image in fullscreenDefenceDonald Trump’s abandonment of Europe’s defence and disdain for Nato marks one of the most ­profound and influential breaks with longstanding US policy, even for a supremely disruptive leader.Many US presidents have grumbled about European over-reliance on American deterrence in recent decades, with predecessors including Barack Obama demanding allies spend more on their own armies.But their frustrations were rooted in concern that European defence cuts undermined an ­alliance that almost everyone in Washington – across the political divide – saw as critical to American global leadership.Trump, in contrast, appears to be seeking European spending to replace or supersede Nato, not strengthen it. He says Washington’s defence priorities are now deterring China in Asia and fighting organised crime at home.In his first term, he touted the idea of withdrawing America from the alliance, which was formed in 1949 for protection against the Soviet Union. This time he has opted to undermine it from within.The president himself has ­publicly contemplated ignoring Article 5, the core mutual defence clause at the heart of the transatlantic ­alliance, which requires Nato ­countries to come to the aid of any member that is attacked. It has only been invoked once – by the US after the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York in 2001.Trump said the US might ­condition any support for other members on military spending, and questioned if US allies would come to the country’s aid if in need. His administration is considering giving up the Nato command role inaugurated by war hero president Dwight D Eisenhower and held by America ever since, NBC reported last week.Europe was already scrambling to increase defence spending and ­coordination when the US halted military aid shipments to Ukraine, and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv earlier this month.Trump’s decision came after a spectacular on-camera showdown in the Oval Office with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But his willingness to cut loose a force that Washington has trained, armed and backed, and which is fighting a major US rival, stunned even some of his own political allies.European governments who have also spent billions on Ukraine’s defence, and have been dealing with covert Russian sabotage and spy operations across the continent, were not informed in advance.The flow of weapons and aid has now resumed, but the message was clear. Major European military powers, including the UK and Germany, are now reportedly racing to put together a five- to 10-year plan for a managed transfer of European defence, to stave off any more abrupt moves from Washington.Trump’s unpredictability has been heightened by his choice of ­leaders for key security roles, ­including a former Fox television host, Pete Hegseth, as defence secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, who has a long ­history of pro-Russian views, as director of national intelligence.Security experts warn that ­turmoil in the leadership and ­management of intelligence agencies may also lead to a less visible but highly ­damaging defence decoupling – of the relationship between America’s spies and the secret services of its allies.View image in fullscreenDiplomacyThe votes in the United Nations marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ­provided a bleak snapshot of the yawning diplomatic divide between Donald Trump’s America and the country’s traditional allies.On February 25, the US joined international pariahs Russia, Belarus and North Korea to vote against a resolution condemning Russia as an aggressor state and calling on it to remove its troops from Ukraine.The wording rejected by Trump’s diplomats had been put forward by Ukraine, whose defence the US has funded, and the European Union, Washington’s partner in that effort. It passed in the general assembly with backing from 93 countries.The isolationist bent of Trump’s politics extends beyond the ­economy and defence, into international diplomacy. He has ordered the US to withdraw from a host of global organisations and initiatives, from the World Health Organization to the Paris climate agreement.The process of taking the world’s second biggest emitter of planet-heating pollution out of the accord to tackle global ­emissions will take about a year. As with the UN vote on Ukraine, that move puts the world’s most ­powerful democracy in unusual ­company, with Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the deal.Trump imposed sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court over arrest warrants it had issued for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who was the country’s defence minister at the time.His predecessor Joe Biden had also criticised the court, but such a direct attack on an institution ­established with broad international support was unprecedented.Several former British ambassadors to Washington warned this month that there has been a seismic and perhaps permanent shift in the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries, meaning that the UK will need to seek out other allies.“It’s difficult to find either a conceptual area in ­international relations or a particular geographical area where our interests are really converging at the moment,” Nigel Sheinwald, the ­ambassador from 2007 to 2012, told a ­parliamentary committee.“On more or less any big ­foreign policy issue that we’re dealing with today, we don’t agree with the United States… whether that is the Middle East, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s climate change, China, but above all on Europe itself,” Sheinwald said. 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    Top Democrat says Trump may seek mineral deal with both Russia and Ukraine

    Donald Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a top Senate Democrat has warned, discussing the US president’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to 50% of its rare-earth reserves, as a price for helping end the war three years after Russia invaded.“I think anything that helps position Ukraine for any peace negotiations is a positive move,” said Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations and armed services committee, who recently visited Ukraine.“Now, what we heard when we were in Ukraine is that 40-50% of those mineral deposits are actually in territory controlled by the Russians. Maybe part of the deal is President Trump is going to get a deal with Vladimir Putin on the mineral rights too. So … that could be a little tricky.”Shaheen was speaking to the One Decision podcast, hosted by the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, the former CIA director Leon Panetta and the reporter Christina Ruffini.Saying Ukraine cannot expect to regain all territory taken by Russia, and rejecting Kyiv’s aim of joining Nato, Trump has demanded a deal with Ukraine as repayment for military support. On Wednesday, Trump said Zelenskyy would visit Washington on Friday to sign a “very big agreement that will be on rare earth and other things”.Trump did not offer details of a deal but said he was “not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” adding: “We’re going to have Europe do that.”Trump is due to meet Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, on Thursday. Starmer has said the UK is willing to contribute peacekeeping troops.Shaheen said: “I do think there is support to do everything we can to help get a peace in Ukraine. And from my perspective, one of the most important aspects of that is ensuring that the Ukrainians are positioned in the most positive, favorable way for them. If this deal helps with that, and President Zelenskyy is comfortable signing it, then I support that.”Shaheen said her visit to Ukraine, with fellow Democrat Michael Bennet, of Colorado, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, proved “compelling, disturbing”.The senators visited Bucha, where Russian troops carried out a massacre in 2022. The town “showed the resilience of the Ukrainian people,” Shaheen said, adding: “They’re willing to resist. And it showed just what a murderous thug Vladimir Putin is.”Shaheen said the senators “met with the mayor of Bucha, we met with the priest. There had been a mass grave of a couple of hundred of the civilians who were killed. There were over 500 killed in Bucha in that 33-day siege [the final toll is unclear]. It was horrific. It was absolutely brutal. Finding the graves, taking the corpses out of the graves.“We met with the investigators who were investigating each murder individually, and they showed us the picture of the Russian commander who had given the order. And it was very clear that the order was to frighten the civilians, to do everything you can to try and reduce any resistance from the civilians. And for me … I thought this was a small village someplace in the hinterlands of Ukraine, but it’s not, it’s a suburb of Kyiv, and the tanks were stopped right there at the suburb.“So it really pointed out the stark contrast between the Russians and the Ukrainians and what’s at stake in this war.”Trump has stirred huge controversy by seeming to favor Putin and Russia in regards to the war in Ukraine, not least by beginning talks for a settlement without including Ukraine or European powers.Asked about Trump’s lie that Zelenskyy was a dictator who started the war, Shaheen said: “It’s very distressing. And the president’s wrong. He’s just wrong … Vladimir Putin is the dictator. President Zelenskiy was duly elected by the people of Ukraine, and he has a higher favorability rating than Donald Trump.” More

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    The Guardian view on Trump’s realignment: the geopolitical plates are moving. Brace for further shocks | Editorial

    The rumblings prompted by Donald Trump’s re-election soon gathered force. First came tariffs and threats of territorial annexation; then the greater shocks of JD Vance’s Valentine’s Day massacre of European values and Mr Trump’s enthusiastic amplification of Kremlin lines on Ukraine.On Monday came another seismic moment. For more than a decade, the UN security council has been largely paralysed by the split between the five permanent members – Russia and China on one side; the US, France and Britain on the other. This time, when the US brought a resolution calling for an end to the war in Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it did not criticise Moscow, demand its withdrawal or back Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The result was that China and Russia backed the resolution – while the UK and France, having failed to temper it, abstained.Earlier, even Beijing had chosen to abstain rather than reject a UN general assembly resolution condemning Moscow as the aggressor in Ukraine. It was passed overwhelmingly, with the backing of 93 states. Yet the US joined Russia in voting against it – along with Belarus, North Korea, Syria and a handful of others. “These are not our friends,” the Republican senator John Curtis wrote on X.The post-1945 order is beyond repair while Mr Trump occupies the White House. Emmanuel Macron’s charm and deftness papered over the problems somewhat when he became the first European leader to meet the US president since his re-election. (Sir Keir Starmer, not noted for his nimbleness or charisma, is likely to find the task somewhat harder this week.) The French president was adroit in flattering Mr Trump even as he told the truth. But it is not surprising that he failed to make any real progress in closing the gap. These are not cracks in the transatlantic relationship, but a chasm.A committed Atlanticist such as Friedrich Merz, on course to shortly become the German chancellor, is compelled to urge independence from the US because “the Americans, at any case the Americans in this administration, do not care much about the fate of Europe”. He warned that European leaders might not be able to talk about Nato in its current form by June. The problem is not only what Mr Trump may do but what he may not. Nato is built on the conviction that countries will stand by the commitments they make. That confidence cannot exist while Mr Trump is president.When Sir Keir told MPs on Tuesday that “Here we are, in a world where everything has changed”, he was commenting on Russian aggression, but everyone understood the real shift underlying his remarks. To note, as he did, that the US-British alliance has survived countless external challenges was not quite a vote of confidence. It tacitly acknowledged that the threat this time is internal.The ground is rocking beneath Europe’s feet. It must brace itself for further shocks. In place of the post-second world war order, Mr Trump envisages a world where alliances are no more than empty words and great powers bluff and bully their way through. Bilateral meetings have their purpose – they may offer minimal respite and buy a little time – but it will require common will to defend the interests of European states. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, suggested that European leaders would be meeting in London at the weekend to discuss security. Their best hope of standing firm is by standing together.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    Starmer has the backing of Britons to stand up to Trumpism. At the White House, he should do so | Polly Toynbee

    Day by day another vast hole opens up beneath what was once solid. The man who is on course to become Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, once the most pro-US of leaders, has declared Nato in effect over. In his clear-eyed perception of Donald Trump’s first month, 80 years of shared transatlantic values have fallen into that crater. The US “doesn’t care about the fate of Europe one way or another” and Washington’s actions have been “no less drastic, dramatic, and ultimately no less brazen” than Moscow’s, he said. Now, Europe must defend itself.The moment smacks of that 1940 David Low cartoon of a British soldier standing on a rock in a stormy sea, shaking his fist as the Luftwaffe approach: “Very well, alone”. But this time we Europeans are alone. JD Vance, the US vice-president, declared war on European values and traditions; Europe’s liberal “enemies within” are more dangerous in his eyes than Russia or China. Those spell-breaking words told Europeans that the US can never be trusted again; at any time, Americans may vote for a leader who betrays old allies, sharing no affinity with Europe’s liberal democracies, international rights or laws. “The west” no longer exists as an entity bound by shared beliefs.Keir Starmer knows that every step he takes inside the White House on Thursday could set off some Trumpian explosive device. Emmanuel Macron will have already tested the ground (he arrived there today). The US president’s wild unpredictability, whether by design, delusion or distraction, is a weapon in itself, and a wary Starmer is war-gaming it with his advisers. That “bridge” of a “special relationship” remains in No 10’s official briefing lexicon, but by now it is wholly illusory.View image in fullscreenStarmer’s task is to salvage the best possible agreements on Ukraine, tariffs and defence without wavering on what once were mutual principles. He has his red lines, echoed across Europe: “No talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine”. No mafioso protection racket grabbing Ukraine’s mineral wealth to pay off bogus debts. Reuters reports that unless Volodymyr Zelenskyy pays half a trillion dollars, the US will cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications network, crippling the country’s defences. In the face of such brutishness, Starmer is the right man: lawyerly, calm and diplomatic. He will not be riled into pointless verbal warfare. He brings Europe’s pledges to spend more, and possibly the hubristic offer of the UK’s new ambassador, Peter Mandelson, of a “new economic partnership” with the UK as a hub for US AI to “Make our economies great again”.But everyone can see that Trump’s “reset” with Vladimir Putin is irreconcilable with Nato. The alliance is dead if it fails to resist a Russian aggressor, a despot who murders opposition politicians, commits unspeakable war crimes, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, with a declared intent to return Warsaw pact countries to its embrace. Trump is Russia’s greatest asset.Starmer will avoid verbal spats with a champion spitter. Be bold, comes the best advice from Merz, warning Europe’s leaders “not to come to Washington as a dwarf” or they “will be treated as one”. As Europe speedily circles the wagons, the UK finds its role will be vital, as Macron and Merz call for a joint nuclear shield to be provided by France and the UK, pivoting from US nuclear dependence. In a continent that is losing the security we relied on all our lives, trade disputes become a trivial quibble, Brexit an irrelevance. Merz is calling for Europe to come together in foreign, trade and security policy. Starmer ought to seize the chance, and abandon Labour’s fears of Brexiters.With its colossal majority, Labour has nothing to fear in rallying the country around joint European defence as a necessary patriotic cause, leaving the Tories and Reform confounded. The public that welcomed Ukrainians rejects Trump’s betrayal plans: 21% of people strongly support British soldiers being stationed in Ukraine as peacekeepers, and 37% of people “somewhat” support the idea. Only 21% are opposed to it. The idea of a European army would have been unthinkable during the Brexit referendum. Meanwhile, on trade, a majority of voters in every constituency thinks the government should prioritise trade with the EU over the US, even in Clacton, Nigel Farage’s seat.Fifty-five per cent of Britons now say it was wrong to leave the EU, while just 11% call Brexit a success. There’s no need to reopen those old wounds. A Europe united against new perils seems likely to loosen its rigid single market rules on trade, given that Britain would be contributing so much in mutual defence. As Britain strives to spend up to 3% compared with Germany’s 1.5% defence spending, the doors to trade must surely open for the UK to regain some of the 4-5% of GDP it has lost since Brexit.View image in fullscreenThe Brexiters now sound bizarrely out of tune. Last week, David Frost, who led the UK’s negotiations with the EU, frantically tweeted: “Labour are taking us back into the EU orbit by stealth and hoping you won’t notice till it’s too late. Don’t let them get away with it.” Yet those days are done. Instead, all of Europe and the UK need defence eurobonds for all to borrow. If the opposition attacks the chancellor for breaking a borrowing pledge, Labour need only point to the frightening new world where Elon Musk sends warm congratulations not to Germany’s new leader, but to the far-right AfD.There will be a White House press conference during Starmer’s visit, a dangerous opportunity for Trump to say unspeakable things while leaving Starmer dumbstruck. If he’s lost for words, he might remember those spoken by a particularly memorable British prime minister at a press conference with a US president in 2003. Hugh Grant, playing the prime minister in Love Actually, told the president, Billy Bob Thornton: “I fear that this has become a bad relationship; a relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to Britain. We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too … And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.”The real world is not scripted by Richard Curtis for happy endings. Poking presidents in public is not politic, and Starmer is likely to offer Trump a carriage ride with King Charles. But he will have no trouble rousing voters to defend European and British values against Trumpism.

    Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    No matter how distasteful we find Trump and Vance over Europe, they speak a blunt truth | Simon Jenkins

    It’s tough being rightwing these days. You have to find something nice to say about Donald Trump. That is hard. He thinks Kyiv started the Ukraine war and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a “dictator”. But what about JD Vance? The US vice-president thinks that Europe’s “threat from within”, which is putting “free speech … in retreat”, is worse than any threat from Russia or China. These men are deranged. What more is there to say?The answer is quite a lot. John Stuart Mill warned that “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”. We must try to understand the case they are making, whether we agree with it or not.Yes, these men are mendacious and hypocritical. Trump claims that Zelenskyy “refuses to have elections” and that he is “very low in the polls” despite recent polling showing that he still has a majority of Ukrainian support. As for the threat to free speech “from within”, the Associated Press is banned from White House briefings for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”, and Trump’s friend Elon Musk thinks CBS’s “lying” journalists “deserve a long prison sentence”.Trump/Vance have cut through half a century of consensual waffle about the US’s God-given destiny to lead the world to goodness and freedom. Whether the issue is peace and war, immigration or tariffs, they claim to seek the US’s self-interest and nothing else. Why should Americans fork out billions each year to defend a Europe that fails to defend itself? Why should they arm distant nations to fight their neighbours, or tip staggering amounts of aid into Africa’s basket cases?If the rest of the world has screwed up – while the US has stayed free and rich for two and a half centuries – that is the world’s problem. Americans have spent a fortune these past 50 years trying to improve life on Earth and, frankly, it has failed. To hell with diplomatic etiquette.As for Ukraine, enough is enough. Putin is not going to invade the US, nor has he any intention of invading western Europe. If Europe wants to pretend otherwise, champion Vladimir Putin’s foes, sanction and enrage him, it can do so alone.Nato was a Hitler/Stalin thing. It was just another device to make the US pay for Europe’s defence. Not any more. The US, says the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, “is no longer the primary guarantor of security in Europe”. Bang goes plausible nuclear deterrence.In reality, these talking points are not new, though they have not previously been expressed so brutally by an administration. In various guises, they have lurked beneath the surface of US isolationism for more than a century. To win an election, Woodrow Wilson swore that the first world war was “one with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us”. Franklin Roosevelt promised the same of the second. He promised American mothers “again and again and again, your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”. Neither kept his word.US public opinion can be patriotic when a war is on, as during Vietnam. But otherwise it has been persistently anti-interventionist. Kennedy might have pleaded global sacrifice and to “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man”. But that was largely fine words for foreign consumption.What Trump/Vance are now saying to western Europe is get serious. The cold war is over. You know Russia has no desire to occupy western Europe. This proclaimed threat is a fantasy got up by what a wise president, Dwight Eisenhower, called the US’s military-industrial complex, long practised at extracting profit from fear. If Keir Starmer really wants “to give priority to defence”, he can slash his own health and welfare budgets to pay for it. But is he really that threatened, or does it merely sound good?Joe Biden was meticulous in the degree of help he extended to Kyiv. Now is the inevitable moment of extrication, but it will require a very difficult ceasefire to precede it. Without a substantial guarantee from Washington, it is hard to see anything other than eventual defeat for Kyiv. Ukraine could yet prove a rerun of the US in South Vietnam.With a minimum of delicacy, Trump/Vance have decided to expose the mix of platitude, bluff and profiteering that underpinned much of the cold war. Nato’s victory in 1989 suggested the need for a shift to a more nuanced multipolar world, one that was never properly defined.Trump/Vance are right that a realignment is badly needed. They have chosen the worst possible moment and the worst possible way to say it. We can be as rude to them as we like, but they will have US democracy on their side.

    Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More