In less than two weeks, President Donald Trump has upended America’s long-standing role in the world.
At the United Nations on Monday, in the same hall where U.S. diplomats for decades confronted their Russian counterparts on behalf of the “free world,” Washington’s envoy joined Moscow in voting against a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The vote followed a week in which President Trump seemed to side with Russia against Ukraine, announcing plans to negotiate a peace deal without Ukraine at the table and blaming Kyiv for starting the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched with a full-scale invasion three years ago.
Governments in Europe and democracies around the world are treating Trump’s actions and statements not as provocative posturing, but as an earthquake.
“This administration’s policies are a fundamental shift,” said James Bindenagel, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served for years in Germany.
After Trump’s move toward Russia, threats of tariffs against NATO allies and talk of acquiring Greenland, European and other democratic governments are adjusting to the reality that the U.S. can no longer be considered a trusted ally, current and former Western diplomats told NBC News.
An opportunity for China
With American reliability in doubt, some European nations and other countries may seek alternative partners and markets, possibly in China, Bindenagel said.
“The loss of trust in America creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is likely to be filled by cooperation between Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Iran,” said Bindenagel, professor emeritus at the University of Bonn.
Trump’s shift away from Europe creates an opportunity for Beijing to try to draw Europe further into its orbit, he said, adding, “China is the real winner here.”
If the Trump administration continues to antagonize its partners and question its alliances, there is a risk China — as well as Russia— could expand their spheres of influence in the Asia-Pacific region, in Africa and Eastern Europe, experts said. In Asia, stunned officials in countries aligned with the United States are grappling with the implications of the apparent about-face in Washington, said Michael Green, chief executive officer of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
“It is no exaggeration to say that this deeply unnerved even our closest allies in Asia,” said Green, who served on the White House National Security Council under George W. Bush.
The Trump administration’s aggressive dismantling of the U.S. agency overseeing foreign aid has had ripple effects abroad, according to Green. U.S. embassies are hampered by the chaos in Washington and funding for democracy programs has dried up, a potential boon for China, he said.
“Senior officials in Japan, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand have told me that China is swooping in, offering to replace the United States as the partner of choice,” Green said.
The Trump administration’s treatment of Ukraine has raised fears among Asian allies that Washington may not come to the aid of Taiwan if China seeks to seize control of the island by force or coercion, former U.S. officials said.
Before French President Emmanuel Macron met with President Trump in Washington on Monday, Macron said: “How can you, then, be credible in the face of China if you’re weak in the face of Putin?”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that if America were to scale back military assistance for Ukraine, it would allow the U.S. to focus its resources on the Asia-Pacific region.
The image that America has long tried to present to the world, as a champion of democratic rule and a counterweight to autocracy, also seemed to be radically altered. Singapore’s defense minister, Ng Eng Hen, said last week that America had once been seen as a force for “moral legitimacy” and was now looking like “a landlord seeking rent.”
Pushing allies?
The Trump administration and its supporters say the president is merely pushing allies to pay a bigger share of their own defense needs, recalibrating trade relationships and working to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
“President Trump’s America First approach to diplomacy prioritizes what’s in the best interest of the United States,” said Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.
“The Trump administration will continue to engage our allies and partners to improve burden-sharing measures for defense spending, rebalancing trade deficits and ensuring global adversaries do not take advantage of America as they did under Biden,” Hughes added.
But for Europeans, there is now a grim determination to prepare for a future without America at its side.
Friedrich Merz, the presumptive next chancellor of Germany after the country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, said it was unclear if the NATO alliance would survive.
“After Donald Trump’s statements in the last week, it is clear that the Americans are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” Merz, the leader of the center-right CDU/CSU alliance, said on German television.
Members of NATO and the European Union currently lack the military strength, economic unity and political will to be able to secure peace in Ukraine and fill the void currently filled by the United States, Bindenagel and other former officials said.
“Russia is not an all-powerful adversary with an economy the size of Italy’s,” he said. “It is simply far more determined than we are, which amplifies its limited potential tremendously.”
Nile Gardiner, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank, which strongly supports the president’s agenda, said that despite the friction with European governments, Trump will likely bolster the NATO alliance with his policies and possibly end a war that threatens to destabilize Europe.
European countries, including the United Kingdom, recently announced further increases in defense spending, which Gardiner said was a response to Trump’s demands for NATO allies to take more responsibility for the continent’s defense.
“You’re already seeing the Trump effect across Europe, and I think that Trump’s goal is to leave NATO in far, far stronger shape four years from now, than when he inherited it,” he said.
But a flawed peace agreement that fails to provide sufficient security guarantees for Ukraine against future Russian attacks could embolden Putin and produce even greater dangers for Europe, said Timothy Sayle, author of “Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order.”
“What might feel like peace in the short term could be laying the conditions for a broader war in the future,” said Sayle, an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto.
If Russia is allowed to retain the territory it has seized in Ukraine, a peace deal could provide Moscow with a platform to stage further incursions or covert operations against other European countries nearby, including the Baltic states, he said.
In a speech at Monday’s U.N. session on Ukraine, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said that ending the war “at any cost” by appeasing Russia would be a fatal error.
Such a move would only invite further aggression, he said. “If Ukraine is abandoned today, who will be next?”
