Maybe it was because Europe is populated by milquetoast dandies who hitched a free ride on American backs for too long. Maybe America was simply a spent force that didn’t “have enough power for global hegemony,” in the words of the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby. Either way, at the outset of Donald Trump’s second administration, the intellectuals who gravitated toward the MAGA movement’s big tent seemed to agree that America could not give up on Europe fast enough.
The Trump administration in some ways shares the Obama administration’s misconceptions about America, its interests, and the value of its partnerships abroad. As a consequence, Trump has so far failed at that task in much the same way that the 44th president did.
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