In the Review’s April 24 issue, Fintan O’Toole writes about the implications of Donald Trump’s rejection of the United States’ longtime alliance with Europe:

How did Trump himself get from desire for “a strong Europe,” identification with “the West,” and commitment to “the transatlantic bond” to a historic sundering of that bond? Trump has shocked America’s European partners by betraying Ukraine and openly siding with Russia. There has been, as Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, put it on March 7, a “profound change of American geopolitics,” and Europeans are having to come to terms with what it means for themselves and the world. . . .

If Trump did no more than walk away—as he often threatened to do in his first term—from America’s commitments to Europe, he could even claim to have delivered a salutary dose of shock treatment. But he is not walking away from Europe; he is trampling all over it. His regime has not lost interest in Europe; it has developed a malevolent interest in destroying the EU.

Below, alongside O’Toole’s essay, are five articles from our archives about the postwar transatlantic global order.

Fintan O’Toole
Shredding the Postwar Order

Donald Trump is reshaping relations between Europe and the US more dramatically than at any time since World War II.

Jessica T. Mathews
What Trump Is Throwing Out the Window

“What Donald Trump has done is to take the few things on which neocons, realists, and liberal internationalists agree and throw them out the window. These are fundamentals of American foreign policy, taken as givens by both parties for the seven decades since the close of World War II. They include, first, the recognition of the immense value to the security of the United States provided by its allies and worldwide military and political alliances.”

—February 9, 2017

Donald Tusk, interviewed by Michał Matlak
The Case for Europe

“The incomplete truce we have reached, and halting the Russians—because it was said that after annexing Crimea they would try to go further—I regard to a large extent as the result of sanctions, and of maintaining solidarity between Europe, the United States, and our other allies.”

—February 18, 2016

Tony Judt
Europe vs. America

In past decades it was conventionally assumed—whether with satisfaction or regret—that Europe and America were converging upon a single “Western” model of late capitalism, with the US as usual leading the way….

But something has gone wrong with this story. It is not just that Starbucks has encountered unexpected foreign resistance to double-decaf-mocha-skim-latte-with-cinnamon (except, revealingly, in the United Kingdom), or that politically motivated Europeans are abjuring high-profile American commodities. It is becoming clear that America and Europe are not way stations on a historical production line, such that Europeans must expect to inherit or replicate the American experience after an appropriate time lag. They are actually quite distinct places, very possibly moving in divergent directions. There are even those for whom it is not Europe but rather the United States that is trapped in the past.

—February 10, 2005

Timothy Garton Ash
Anti-Europeanism in America

“Anti-Europeanism is not symmetrical with anti-Americanism. The emotional leitmotifs of anti-Americanism are resentment mingled with envy; those of anti-Europeanism are irritation mixed with contempt.”

—February 13, 2003

Ronald Steel
The Day They Buried NATO

“As the institutionalized form of US dominance over Western Europe, NATO is now under assault by a whole generation of Europeans who may find De Gaulle’s methods irritating but who share his assumptions.”

—July 28, 1966

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