Europe and Ukraine are learning how little the U.S. cares, as the new president aligns himself with their greatest enemy.
The thing about a war is it forces people to pick a side. And Donald Trump, it seems to many in Europe, is siding with Vladimir Putin.
Seven days of presidential interventions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have made real the nightmares of Ukrainians and many of their allies, upending the transatlantic relationship that has underpinned European security since 1945.
If there were any lingering doubts about the extent of Trump’s willingness to make enemies in Europe, he ended it Tuesday night when he blamed Ukraine for having “started” the war with Russia. Such blatant defiance of the fact of Putin’s unprovoked invasion three years ago shocked even America’s most loyal friends in the region.
“Jesus,” one British government official said privately in response to the president’s outburst.
“We now have an alliance between a Russian president who wants to destroy Europe and an American president who also wants to destroy Europe,” another European diplomat observed in recent days, declining to be identified discussing sensitive matters. “The transatlantic alliance is over.”
The “rental” part of the deal is that we leased the missiles from America and pay an American company to maintain them. Once they’re fitted with a warhead (done in Britain) and loaded aboard the sub, though, they can be fired with literally no outside participation. Being a submarine-based deterrent as it is, they kinda have to be able to operate independently from anything on the land, British government included.
I stand corrected. I’m clearly misremembering. It was around 2014 when the subject was last at the fore front of my mind. For some odd reason