US President Donald Trump welcomed his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to the White House for talks on Monday at a moment of deep uncertainty about the future of transatlantic relations.
Mr Trump is transforming American foreign policy and being seen as effectively tuning out European leadership as he looks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly.
The two leaders started their day by taking part in a virtual meeting with fellow leaders of the G7 to discuss the war.
Mr Trump also has made demands for territory — Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal — as well as precious rare earth minerals from Ukraine.
Just over a month into his second term, the “America First” president has cast a shadow over what veteran US diplomats and former government officials had regarded as America’s calming presence of global stability and continuity.
Despite some notable hiccups, the military, economic and moral power of the United States has dominated the post-Second World War era, most notably after the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
All that, some fear, may be lost if Mr Trump gets his way and the US abandons the principles under which the United Nations and other international bodies were founded.
“The only conclusion you can draw is that 80 years of policy in standing up against aggressors has just been blown up without any sort of discussion or reflection,” said Ian Kelly, a US ambassador to Georgia during the Obama and first Trump administration and now a professor at Northwestern University.
“I’m discouraged for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that I had taken some encouragement at the beginning from the repeated references to ‘peace through strength’,” Mr Kelly added.
“This is not peace through strength — this is peace through surrender.”
