In February 2024, Donald Trump stood in front of a cheering crowd at a campaign rally in Conway, South Carolina, recalling his conversation with the president of a ‘big European country.’ That president, the story goes, asked Trump if the United States (US) would defend their country even if it didn’t meet the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) defence spending targets. Not only did Trump answer with a resounding “no”, he also said he would encourage Putin to do “whatever the hell he wanted” to NATO countries that didn’t “pay their bills”. This statement created panic in the US and Europe, with then-President Biden and European leaders using it as an example of how Trump would abandon allies and destroy the Transatlantic relationship if re-elected. While the fear of destruction may be overstated, it is clear after just a couple of months that Trump and his team will fundamentally reshape the US-European relationship under a new set of rules and expectations.
Europe and Trump 2.0: An era of insular geopolitics? (Rachel Rizzo, Observer Research Institute)
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