U.S. President Donald Trump’s acquiescence to Russian President Vladimir Putin at last Friday’s Alaska summit is further evidence that the U.S. and its NATO partners are drifting further apart with each passing month.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte heralded last month’s agreement among Western allies to invest 5% of gross domestic product in defense — a longtime demand by Trump — as a “big success.” But with Russia’s bloody assault on Ukraine continuing and the U.S. still in many ways an unreliable partner, the long-term future of the alliance remains in question.
“The Western world as we knew it no longer exists.” That was the stark assessment of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in an interview with a German newspaper in April. A major turning point came on Feb. 14 — just weeks after Trump began his second term — when U.S. Vice President JD Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference. In his speech, Vance stated that “the threat to Europe is not external actors like China or Russia, but internal ones — nations drifting away from the fundamental values we share.” He singled out Germany and the United Kingdom, claiming they no longer upheld freedom of speech and were thus diverging from the United States. In particular, he criticized Germany’s political exclusion of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), arguing that even the voices of its supporters deserved a hearing.
