His open hostility toward the European Union has strained a transatlantic alliance that’s endured since World War II and deepened rifts between Europe’s national leaders and within the bloc, imperiling its ability to respond to Trump’s threats and taunts with the kind of unity and strength he respects.
“The Europeans cannot afford to cut ties and to hand in the divorce papers because they are still too dependent, especially when it comes to security and an American military commitment to defending Europe,” said Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But, she continued, the efforts by leaders to maintain solid ties with the U.S. based on short- term interests do not mean the past year hasn’t clarified that the long-term interests are, for the moment, no longer aligned.
And how does the US finally severs the tie?
GREENLAND
If U.S. President Donald Trump invades Greenland, it will spell the end of NATO, Denmark’s leader warned.
IMO, Trump does not know what he is doing. If he thinks US is able to take on the whole world without allies, he is delusional. US went to war in Iraq with many allies, and ended up losing. How would US do against China with no allies? China is a giant and Iraq was a midget.
IMO, Trump’s crazy tariffs, exploding debt, fiscal imbalances, geopolitical intransigence, wild military attacks, and no regard for maintaining world order are leading to a rapid decline in worldwide respect and a loss of standing for US as a whole.
China has excelled in growing their economy, military, and geopolitical influence. US is losing theirs.
Surely one would expect, then, the EU to condemn the U.S. unilateral attack on Venezuela in early days of 2026, resulting in an abduction of its leader Nicolás Maduro? Yet, nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the EU has already demonstrated its selective approach to the international legality when it failed to condemn its violations in Gaza half as vociferously as it did in Ukraine, shredding Europe’s credibility in the Global South and among many European citizens as well.
Instead, the EU’s response to President Trump’s attack on Venezuela was a masterpiece of evasion. European leaders issued vague carbon-copy statements committing to, above all, “closely monitoring the situation” in Venezuela. This “collective monitoring” may be the largest and most passive mission in the bloc’s history.
A much more important question is: Why are Republicans in our Congress letting Trump get away with attacking Venezuela and threatening Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and Mexico?
Why not both? There seems to have been a slow and steady drift of the right towards authoritarianism. Even before Trump. He has certainly accelerated that.
I think far more significant has been the steady drift of Congressmen of the Right (and not just a few Centrist Dems) into bought&paid for cowardly non-existence as independent thinking political beings capable of morality or principles except: me first, and that within a rather short time span.