[BBC] "It must be a policy of the United States," President Harry Truman announced, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."
It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. At its heart was the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to the United States' national interests.
There followed two major US initiatives: the Marshall Plan, a massive package of assistance to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, and the creation of Nato in 1949, which was designed to defend democracies from a Soviet Union that had now extended its control over the eastern part of Europe.
It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from Britain to the United States. More accurately it is the moment that revealed that it already had.
The United States, traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, had emerged from World War Two as the leader of the free world. As America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image.
Yet the fundamental assumptions on which the United States has based its geostrategic ambitions now look set to change.
Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over - and the new world order has yet to take shape.
A CHALLENGE TO THE TRUMAN LEGACY
President Trump's critique of the post-1945 international order dates back decades. Nearly 40 years ago he took out full-page advertisements in three US newspapers to criticise the United States' commitment to the defence of the world's democracies.
"For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States," he wrote in 1987. "Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?
"The world is laughing at America's politicians as we protect ships we don't own, carrying oil we don't need, destined for allies who won't help."
It's a position he has repeated since his second inauguration.
And the fury felt by some in his administration for what they perceive as European reliance on the United States was apparently shown in the leaked messages about air strikes on Houthis in Yemen that emerged this week.
Trump's own position appears to go beyond criticising those he says are taking advantage of the United State's generosity. At the start of his second presidency, he seemed to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Russia that Ukraine would not be granted Nato membership and that it should not expect to get back the territory it has lost to Russia.
Many saw this as giving away two major bargaining chips before talks had even started. He apparently asked Russia for nothing in return.
The United States' foreign policy is now driven, in part at least, by the imperatives of its culture wars. The security of Europe has become entangled in the battle between two polarised and mutually antagonistic visions of what the United States stands for.
Some think the division is about more than Trump's particular views and that Europe can not just sit tight waiting for his term in office to end.
"The US is becoming divorced from European values," argues Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
| I would argue, rather, that it is Europe and Britain that have abandoned European (and English) values, and not merely turned their backs on America but repeatedly given us the cut direct — with mockery appended. |
"That's difficult [for Europeans] to swallow because it means that it's structural, cultural and potentially long-term. "
"I think the current trajectory of the US will outlast Trump, as a person. I think Trumpism will outlast his presidency."
NATO ARTICLE 5 'IS ON LIFE SUPPORT'
The Trump White House has said it will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security, and that European nations should be responsible for their own defence and pay for it.
"If [Nato countries] don't pay, I'm not going to defend them. No, I'm not going to defend them," the president said earlier this month.
For almost 80 years, the cornerstone of European security has been embedded in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member state of the alliance is an attack on all.
In Downing Street last month, just before his visit to the White House, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told me during an interview that he was satisfied that the United States remained the leading member of Nato and that Trump personally remained committed to Article 5.
Others are less sure.
Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary in the last Conservative government, told me earlier this month: "I think Article 5 is on life support.
"If Europe, including the United Kingdom, doesn't step up to the plate, invest a lot on defence and take it seriously, it's potentially the end of the Nato that we know and it'll be the end of Article 5.
"Right now, I wouldn't bet my house that Article 5 would be able to be triggered in the event of a Russian attack… I certainly wouldn't take for granted that the United States would ride to the rescue."
| If you are not for yourselves, who should be? |
According to polling by the French company Institut Elabe, nearly three quarters of French people now think that the United States is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavourable views of the United States as well.
And yet Trump is by no means the first US president to tell Europe to get its defence spending in order. In 2016 Barack Obama urged Nato allies to increase theirs, saying: "Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence."
| Nor was President Obama the first Democratic president to say so. The malfeasance and mockery — and promises that soon they’ll start to fulfill long-signed treaty commitments — are practically ancient. |
HAS A 'FRAGMENTATION OF THE WEST' BEGUN?
All of this is great news for Putin. "The entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes," he said last year. "Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity."
In early March, three days after Volodymyr Zelensky's disastrous meeting with Trump and Vance in the White House, a Kremlin spokesman declared "the fragmentation of the West has begun".
'WE FORGOT THE LESSONS OF OUR HISTORY'
| Of history, period. And mocked those who remember. |
One of the great challenges Europe, in particular, faces from here is the question of how to arm itself adequately. Eighty years of reliance on the might of the United States has left many European democracies exposed.
Britain, for example, has cut military spending by nearly 70% since the height of the Cold War. (At the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, Europe allowed itself a peace dividend and began a decades-long process of reducing defence spending.)
"We had a big budget [during the Cold War] and we took a peace dividend," says Wallace. "Now, you could argue that that was warranted.
"The problem is we went from a peace dividend to corporate raiding. [Defence] just became the go-to department to take money from. And that is where we just forgot the lessons of our history."
The prime minister told parliament last month that Britain would increase defence spending from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027. But is that enough?
"It isn't enough just to stand still," argues Wallace. "It wouldn't be enough to fix the things we need to make ourselves more deployable, and to plug the gaps if the Americans left."
Then there is the wider question of military recruitment. "The West is in freefall in its military recruiting, it's not just Britain," argues Wallace.
"At the moment, young people aren't joining the military. And that's a problem."
| Y’all not only mock America, but you mock your own militaries. Why would your young people put their lives on the line for those who abuse them? |
But Germany's new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And "Europeanising" NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has.
Others share the view that Europe must become more self reliant militarily - but some are concerned that not all of Europe is on board with this.
"Where we are at the moment is that the East Europeans by and large, don't need to get the memo," says Ian Bond, deputy director, Centre for European Reform. "The further west you go, the more problematic it becomes until you get to Spain and Italy." |
