'Nightmare': US allies fear America is lost -- even if Trump goes down in defeat

Traditional American allies in Europe fear that the United States has been lost as a reliable partner on the world stage, even if President Donald Trump goes down in defeat.

In interviews with the New York Times, European officials said that they fear the shift of the Republican Party away from traditional American foreign policy may be permanent, which would mean that relations with the United States would depend entirely on which party controls the White House.

"Europeans are afraid that there is no longer a foreign-policy consensus in the United States," said Ivan Krastev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies. "Every new administration can mean a totally new policy, and for them this is a nightmare."

Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations similarly said that "there is an incredible decay in Europe of the sense of the United States as a leader" in the world, as evidenced by its disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has so far left more than 220,000 Americans dead.

“Biden doesn’t solve their America problem,” he said. “He’s not going to be president for ever, and Democrats won’t always be in power, and people have learned that the U.S. can’t be trusted on foreign policy, because the next administration will come in and wipe it away.”