Everyone but Trump Understands What
He’s Done
Allied leaders know that any positive
gesture they make will count for nothing.
March 17, 2026
Donald Trump does not think
strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even
rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that
occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will
change the behavior of other people in other places.
He does not consider the wider
implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these
decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes
his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever
he said or did before.
For the past 14 months, few foreign
leaders have been able to acknowledge that someone without any strategy can
actually be president of the United States. Surely, the foreign-policy analysts
murmured, Trump thinks beyond the current moment. Surely, foreign statesmen
whispered, he adheres to some ideology, some pattern, some plan. Words were
thrown around—isolationism, imperialism—in an attempt to
place Trump’s actions into a historical context. Solemn articles were written
about the supposed significance of Greenland, for example, as if Trump’s
interest in the Arctic island were not entirely derived from the fact that it
looks very large on a Mercator projection.
This week, something broke. Maybe
Trump does not understand the link between the past and the present, but other
people do. They can see that, as a result of decisions that Trump made but
cannot explain, the Strait of Hormuz is blocked by Iranian mines and drones.
They can see oil prices rising around the world and they understand that it is
difficult and dangerous for the U.S. Navy to solve this problem. They can also
hear the president lashing out, as he has done so many times before, trying to
get other people to take responsibility, threatening them if they don’t.
From the March 2026 issue: America vs. the world
NATO faces a “very bad” future if it
doesn’t help clear the strait, Trump told the Financial Times,
apparently forgetting that the United States founded the organization and has
led it since its creation in 1949. He has also said he is not asking but
ordering seven countries to help. He did not specify which ones. “I’m demanding
that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is
their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way from
Florida to Washington. “It’s the place from which they get their energy.”
Actually it isn’t their territory, and it’s his fault that their energy is
blocked.
But in Trump’s mind, these threats are
justified: He has a problem right now, so he wants other countries to solve it.
He doesn’t seem to remember or care what he said to their leaders last month or
last year, nor does he know how his previous decisions shaped public opinion in
their countries or harmed their interests. But they remember, they care, and
they know.
Specifically, they remember that for
14 months, the American president has tariffed them, mocked their security
concerns, and repeatedly insulted them. As long ago as January 2020,
Trump told several European officials that “if
Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.” In
February 2025, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
that he had no right to expect support either, because “you don’t have any
cards.” Trump ridiculed Canada as the “51st state” and referred to both the
present and previous Canadian prime ministers as “governor.” He claimed,
incorrectly, that allied troops in Afghanistan “stayed a little back, a little
off the front lines,” causing huge offense to the families of soldiers who died
fighting after NATO invoked Article 5 of the organization’s treaty, on behalf
of the United States, the only time it has done so. He called the British “our
once-great ally,” after they refused to participate in the initial assault on
Iran; when they discussed sending some aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf
conflict earlier this month, he ridiculed the idea on social media: “We
don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!"
At times, the ugly talk changed into
something worse. Before his second inauguration, Trump began hinting that he wouldn’t rule out using
force to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark, a close NATO ally. At first
this seemed like a troll or a joke; by January 2026, his public and private
comments persuaded the Danes to prepare for an American invasion. Danish
leaders had to think about whether their military would shoot down American
planes, kill American soldiers, and be killed by them, an exercise so wrenching
that some still haven’t recovered. In Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I was shown a
Danish app that tells users which products are American, so that they know not
to buy them. At the time it was the most popular app in the country.
The economic damage is no troll
either. Over the course of 2025, Trump placed tariffs on Europe, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea, often randomly—or again, whimsically—and with
no thought to the impact. He raised tariffs on Switzerland because he
didn’t like the Swiss president, then lowered them after a Swiss business
delegation brought him presents, including a gold bar and a
Rolex watch. He threatened to place 100 percent tariffs on
Canada should Canada dare to make a trading agreement with China. Unbothered by
possible conflicts of interest, he conducted trade negotiations with Vietnam,
even as his son Eric Trump was breaking ground on a $1.5 billion golf-course deal in that country.
From the April 2025 issue: The Trump world order
Europeans might have tolerated the
invective and even the trade damage had it not been for the real threat that
Trump now poses to their security. Over the course of 14 months, he has,
despite talking of peace, encouraged Russian aggression. He stopped sending
military and financial aid to Ukraine, thereby giving Vladimir Putin renewed
hope of victory. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, began openly negotiating business deals between
the United States and Russia, although the war has not ended and the Russians
have never agreed to a cease-fire. Witkoff presents himself to European leaders
as a neutral figure, somewhere between NATO and Russia—as if, again, the United
States were not the founder and leader of NATO, and as if European security
were of no special concern to Americans. Trump himself continues to lash out at
Zelensky and to lie about American support for Ukraine, which he repeatedly
describes as worth $300 billion or more. The real number is closer to $50 billion, over
three years. At current rates, Trump will spend that much in three months in
the Middle East, in the course of starting a war rather than trying to stop
one.
The result: Canadian Prime Minister
Mark Carney has declared that Canada will not participate in the “offensive
operations of Israel and the U.S., and it never will.” German Defense Minister
Boris Pistorius says, “This is not our war, and we didn’t start it.” The
Spanish prime minister refused to let the United States use bases for the
beginning of the war. The U.K. and France might send some ships to protect
their own bases or allies in the Gulf, but neither will send their soldiers or
sailors into offensive operations started without their assent.
This isn’t cowardice. It’s a
calculation: If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for
something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have
stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they
understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days
or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.
