Alarming steps by US allies show who Trump really serves
Donald Trump is doing something to America that no foreign adversary has ever managed, something Vladimir Putinâs been dreaming about for decades: heâs convincing our oldest and closest allies, countries we fought wars to defend and liberate, and with whom we share a democratic system of government, that the United States canât be trusted.
For example, Franceâs government just announced itâs ripping U.S. videoconferencing platforms â Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and others â out of its government offices nationwide and replacing them with a new French-created system called âVisio.â
Thatâs roughly 2.5 million French public employees whoâll no longer be using American digital products because the French have concluded that U.S. tech â and the Silicon Valley billionairesâ pathetic fealty to Trump, bringing him bribes and gifts and groveling in front of him â is a national security risk.
And itâs not just France: the German state of SchleswigâHolstein just moved 44,000 employees off Microsoft and over to an open-source platform, and is now considering replacing Windows with Linux. They also dumped Microsoftâs SharePoint file-sharing system, going with open source Nextcloud.
Weâre no longer seen as a reliable partner: many of our former allies now view us as a potential enemy.
Denmarkâs government, Swiss authorities, Austria, and other European countries are exploring or implementing similar moves. The EUâs senior official for tech sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, said that Europeâs dependence on American technology âcan be weaponized against us.â As ABC News reported:
âA decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Courtâs top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.
âThe sanctions led Microsoft to cancel [International Criminal Courtâs prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad] Khanâs ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a âkill switchâ that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.â
Itâs the same reason Canada is reconsidering purchasing F-35s from America, which would be another major economic and strategic blow to us. Under a leader as corrupt, mentally ill, and erratic as Trump, few countries are willing to have their essential tech or defense infrastructure vulnerable to his whims and tantrums.
Even more shocking, the National Security Desk reports:
âIn a stunning shift announced today, NATO stripped the United States of command of all three of its operationalâlevel Joint Force Commands â the fourâstar headquarters responsible for leading the Alliance in crisis and war.
âFor the first time since NATOâs founding, every major operational command will now be led by European officers. The United Kingdom will assume command of JFC Norfolk, Italy will take over JFC Naples, and Germany and Poland will rotate leadership of JFC Brunssum. SACEUR remains American for now, but only symbolically; todayâs tectonic move makes a future European SACEUR a matter of timing, not theory.â
This isnât about Europeans âhating Americaâ any more than than No Kings protestors calling out Trumpâs fascist actions means they despise our country.
Quite simply, European leaders â like millions of Americans â are looking at Trumpâs naked embrace of Putin, his open contempt for democracy, and his casual threats against NATO allies and concluding that no critical tech or defense system should ever again depend on the whims of this narcissistic wannabe American strongman.
Speaking of wannabe strongmen, ABC added:
âBillionaire Elon Musk is also a factor. Officials worry about relying on his Starlink satellite internet system...â
Analysts now explicitly warn that Trumpâs and his toadiesâ hostility to the EU and his willingness to weaponize sanctions and economic tools have made Silicon Valley firms look more like extensions of an unpredictable strongman who ignores the law, rather than the neutral digital providers theyâve historically positioned themselves as.
After all, if youâre a European defense or interior minister, you have to ask yourself: what happens to our communications and data if Trump wakes up pissed off at us one morning because we didnât leap high enough when he yelled âJump!â
Even more distressing, the damage isnât just confined to tech. Itâs hitting the very heart of the Western alliance system â which we largely created â that has kept relative peace since World War II. Itâs been Putinâs goal for decades, and now heâs getting exactly what he wants from Trump.
When Trump said he would âencourageâ Russia to attack NATO allies that, he claimed, werenât âpaying up,â European leaders didnât shrug it off as a joke. European Council President Charles Michel called the comments âreckless,â correctly saying that such statements âserve only Putinâs interestâ and undermine the core promise of mutual defense. Of course, serving Putinâs â rather than Americaâs â interests is exactly what Trump has been doing for a decade now.
Even NATOâs Secretary General felt compelled, once again, to publicly restate that Article 5 â the pledge that an attack on one is an attack on all â remains âironclad,â slapping down the President of the United States.
As Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in response to Trump threatening to unleash Putin on Europe:
âHeâs more interested in aggrandizing himself and pleasing Putin than protecting our allies. It would be enough to make Reagan ill.â
Schiffâs sentiments were echoed by Charles Michel, the president of the European Council:
âReckless statements on #NATOâs security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putinâs interest. They do not bring more security or peace to the world. On the contrary, they reemphasize the need for the #EU to urgently further develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense.â
So, here we are: the head of NATO and the head of the European Council reduced to reassuring the world that Americaâs president doesnât speak for the alliance when he invites Russia to attack its members. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, couldnât have come up with something more bizarre.
European security analysts now talk openly about âlow trustâ and âruptures and new realitiesâ in their relations with the United States. One EU security study notes that Trump has shown âelements of active hostility against the European project,â highlighting his bizarre, paranoid claim that the EU was set up to âscrewâ the US, as well as his refusal to rule out the use of force to annex Greenland.
And now Trump has his emissary visiting rightwing and neo-Nazi parties and think tanks in Europe, offering them American cash and support. He and Putin appear totally committed to making the world safe for dictators and oligarchs by damaging the democracies of the world.
Americaâs and democracyâs enemies, of course, are thrilled. As one European thinkâtank piece put it bluntly, Trumpâs rhetoric is âa gift to Putin.â When the president of the United States trashes NATO, praises autocrats, and undermines the EU while half of Ukraine is being tormented by brutal cold, the man in the Kremlin doesnât have to spend a ruble to fracture the West. Trump, like a dutiful dog, is doing it for him.
And this isnât just elite handâwringing at the level of governments and ministers; ordinary Europeans are recalibrating their relationship with America, too. Surveys over the past year show European opinions of the United States dropping sharply, a reality we also see in the collapse of European vacationers to the United States.
One EU institute reports that nearly threeâquarters of Europeans now see the United States as a âsomewhat or very unreliableâ partner now, with average Germans among the most skeptical.
A broader survey across Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and Italy found U.S. favorability down, sometimes by double digits, with only about one-in-ten respondents expressing real trust in Trumpâs America to defend them.
Another poll summarized by Politico found that even a majority of Canadians now see the US as a ânegative global force,â driven largely by Trumpâs erratic behavior and his obsession with self-enrichment, having already collected an estimated $4 billion for himself and his family since he was sworn to office.
Put simply, our allies are doing what any rational nation would do when a key partner goes rogue: theyâre hedging.
Theyâre hedging by building their own tech infrastructure, so that Trump canât flip a switch and cut off vital services or demand back-doors into their communications systems or share information with Putin. So Trump canât hand them over to Putin the way he is Ukraine. Theyâre hedging by embracing âstrategic autonomy,â aka European defense capabilities that donât rely on Washington or anybody in America.
Meanwhile, here at home, Trump and his lickspittle Republicans are busily transforming America into exactly the kind of oligarchic, strongman system our grandparents fought World War II to stop.
Heâs pardoned insurrectionists, is purging institutions and installing loyalists, and covering up the child-rape crimes of his billionaire friends, all while aligning himself â and, thus, America â with oligarchs and dictators abroad.
When you combine that internal authoritarian drift with external contempt for allies and admiration for Putin, you get the worst of all worlds: a United States that can no longer credibly lead democratic nations and may increasingly act as a spoiler on behalf of strongmen, grifters, and oligarchs worldwide. And, of course, on behalf of Putin.
Trump promised to âmake America great again.â Instead, heâs teaching the rest of the free world that they need to live without us. All to our and our childrenâs detriment.
- Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.
