A former Trump administration official is warning that the president's pattern of favoring authoritarian leaders over traditional democratic allies has hardened into something far more consequential than a personal quirk.
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, published an op-ed for The i Paper tracing the warning signs back to 2018, when President Donald Trump arrived late to a G7 summit in Canada, lectured allied leaders on trade, and publicly disavowed a joint communiqué he had just signed – all while calling for Russia's reinstatement into the group.
"What looked like a tantrum in 2018 has now become national policy, and as Trump wraps up another G7 meeting, it’s clear that his mood swings (and strong opinions about who America’s real pals should be) have upended the world order for a generation," Taylor wrote.
Eight years later, that prediction appears borne out in hard data. A new European Council on Foreign Relations survey found that just 11 percent of Europeans now consider the United States an ally, a record low representing a nearly halving of transatlantic support since Trump's return to office.
Taylor attributed this collapse to a string of unilateral moves: launching military action against Iran without consulting allies, withdrawing American troops from Germany, threatening Greenland with annexation, sidelining Ukraine, and publicly disparaging leaders such as Keir Starmer.
The deeper consequence, Taylor argued, is the erosion of the mutual trust that historically deterred adversaries like the Soviet Union without firing a shot. With majorities across surveyed countries now doubting America would actually defend them, European nations are responding by increasing military spending and shifting away from U.S. weapons toward domestic defense industries, treating American unreliability not as a passing storm but as a permanent, system-altering shift comparable to climate change.
Taylor noted one small detail that he said symbolized the dramatic shift.
"The question hanging over the finale of the summit is no longer whether America still leads the free world," he concluded. "Clearly, it does not, as G7 leaders don’t even plan to issue the usual 'joint statement' at the conclusion of the multilateral meeting – a sign that the United States can’t align with its friends on a shared press release, let alone major global issues. The real question is whether our friends will wait any longer for us to get our act together. It seems like their patience is wearing thin."