Europe and the death of Pax Americana

If you are still reeling from the shock and awe created by Donald Trump’s foreign policy since taking office, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ as Ronald Reagan once put it.

Trump doesn’t just want to reset trading relations with every country in the world. He wants the world to change its foreign policies to suit the end of Pax Americana – and its replacement with a muscular foreign policy that relies very little, if at all, on the kindness of strangers.

Start with the war in Ukraine. Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin tell us less about the two men than they do about Europe, which is shocked to discover that Trump meant what he said when he declared he would end spending on a war in a faraway place of no interest to Americans. Trump claims the US is ‘in for $200 billion more than Europe’, and he needs funds to offset his looming massive tax cuts.