The only really surprising things about Trump 2.0 has been its pace and the Musk of it all. But resegregation efforts at home (the anti-DEI stuff) and selling out Gaza were quite predictable. Alas, so too is the destruction of NATO and the abandonment of Ukraine. Let me focus on NATO since, yes, I co-wrote a book on it that may no longer be relevant (still my fave book).
Super unqualified and disqualified SecDef Hegseth made it clear to all at his first international meeting:
To be as clear as I can be, there is no stark strategic reality preventing the US from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe. Sure, the days of US national strategy documents aiming for the US to be able to fight two large conventional wars and do other stuff as well are long gone. But guaranteeing European security does not require the ability to fight Russia and China at the same time. It requires the ability to deter both, and that is something quite a bit different.
Going in the wayback machine, for much of the Cold War, especially the 1970s and 1980s, the US's commitment was not to defeat a Soviet invasion (only Tom Clancy's fiction suggested this), but rather that the presence of large numbers of American troops would commit the US to being at war immediately, and that possibility of that war escalating to a nuclear exchange would be sufficient to deter the Soviets.
And it worked, as far as we can tell--I haven't looked at the Soviet archives or read post-Cold War stuff on this, but we have more recent evidence: that Putin has not engaged in any conventional attacks on NATO countries despite the flow of heaps of arms into Ukraine. The US strategy has always been to interdict the flow of arms into the conflict zone--that is what bombing and invading Cambodia and Laos were all about. But Putin has been restrained--that any conventional attack on a NATO ally would quite likely lead to an American response that might then lead to a process that ultimately could get out of control.
The strategic reality that changed yesterday was not that the US can't do this anymore (indeed, defense spending is going to go up). No, the strategic reality that changed is that the US is now led by a guy who wants to be a dictator and is far more comfy hanging out with autocrats than being in a club of democrats. It is a matter of will not, not cannot. And, yes, this was predictable--I made a bet last year with someone (I forget who) that NATO would not survive Trump 2.0.
Sure, the Europeans should spend more on defense, but the ironic key to collective security was depending on a single actor's credibility, the US, and not really on a collection of countries with their own convoluted dynamics. NATO credibility/deterrence was based on a single player. Can Europe provide a similarly convincing deterrent? As to misquote Kissinger, who picks up the phone when you call Europe? The statement that came out yesterday was good, but can the Baltics and the Finns and the Poles count on the resolve not just of Germany or France or the UK but on their remaining simultaneously and continuously resolved? Oh my.
While Hegseth is making my 3 months in Europe this winter/spring more interesting, I'd rather it not be so. None of this was necessary. I keep saying it didn't have to be this way. So, one element of the tragedy of all of this is that it is entirely optional, despite what Hegseth claimed. Indeed, the one thing this thing demonstrates is that a government of Bad Faith cannot be a good ally.
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