Allies on Edge: A Trump Win & the End of Pax Americana
America's friends are in a state of high anxiety that we may very well choose the dark path to tyranny.
A fan of “alternate history” literature, I enjoy the intellectual exercise of pondering things like what if George Washington got his backside whupped at the Battle of Yorktown? What if the North lost to the Confederacy in the Civil War? What if the Axis powers defeated the Allies in World War II? Lately, my mind is preoccupied by, “What if Convicted Felon Donald Trump returns to power?” My answer: it would be the same as if President Franklin Roosevelt had sided with Hitler instead of the Allies. Trump would form a new de facto “Pact of Steel” with Putin and other autocrats. NATO would collapse. The former East Bloc lines would be more or less restored. Xi would seize Taiwan. Our post-World War II allies — particularly Western Europe, Japan, South Korea — would be compelled to accommodate themselves to the new order, essentially compromising their sovereignty and yielding to the demands and whims of the new autocrat-hegemonists. Democratic governments would be replaced by fascist regimes.
The disturbing thing about this scenario is that it may very well become reality.
Two prominent journalists, McKay Coppins and David Rothkopf, recently traveled to Europe to gauge how people are thinking about the United States these days. In a nutshell, they are in a state of high anxiety over Trump’s odds of winning the election and the fate of their countries if that should happen. As a former U.S. diplomat who served in dictatorships, who witnessed up close and personal the human degradation and fear in such systems, I fully share their nervousness.
“Almost every official I spoke with believed that Trump is going to win,” Coppins writes in The Atlantic. “One word came up again and again when I asked European officials about the stakes of the American election: existential.”
Former Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told Coppins, “The anxiety is massive. Foreign counterparts would say it to me straight up.” Their message: “‘The first Trump election — maybe people didn’t understand who he was, or it was an accident. A second election of Trump? We’ll never trust you again.’”
German sources told Coppins that Foreign Ministry “officials have mapped out a range of policy areas likely to be destabilized by his reelection — NATO, Ukraine, tariffs, climate change — and are writing detailed proposals for how to deal with the fallout.” They have drawn up a contingency plan for Joe Biden’s reelection as well, “but few seem to think they’ll need it.” Finally, German officials have also devised planning for a third scenario: widespread political violence in the U.S. in the event millions refuse to accept the outcome of the election.
State Department officials confided to Coppins that their efforts to “reassure” European allies are mostly futile. “What exactly can a U.S. diplomat say, after all, about the fact that the Republican presidential nominee has said he would encourage Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to NATO countries that he considers freeloaders?” NATO governments, Coppins reports, are looking at ways for “Trump-proofing” the alliance.
Rothkopf received the same messages from East European contacts. Former Estonian president Toomas Ilves messaged him, “Someone who believes Putin more than his own intelligence services (as we saw in his Helsinki meeting) is not someone people in Europe trust. . . In any case everyone seems to expect that after a Trump victory, transatlantic relations will be worse than they have been since WW2.”
Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author who has written extensively on Russia and Eastern Europe, told Rothkopf,
Many Europeans are afraid that a second Trump administration would work together with the Russians and their far-right allies in Europe — both those in power in Hungary and Serbia, as well as those who lead opposition parties in France and Germany — to transform European politics, destroy the European Union, and eventually dismantle NATO as well. That would make it easier for Russia and China to divide and dominate the continent for both economic and political advantage. Of course this is not in America’s interest, but Trump does not act in America’s interest. Many Europeans do understand this threat. A German member of parliament recently said to me that he fears Europe will soon be facing three hostile, autocratic, and illiberal states: Russia, China — and the U.S.
Europeans have been hedging their bets with Washington for some time. When I worked in European affairs at the State Department when communist regimes were falling like dominoes, the French initiated an effort for European nations to form their own military alliance independent of the United States. We weighed in vigorously, urging them not to take any action that would undercut NATO. In 1992, Eurocorps came into being. Now with eleven members, its mission is to be at the disposal of both NATO and the EU for crisis management operations.
But the French are again stirring the pot for greater European strategic self-sufficiency. French President Emmanuel Macron has been advocating for “strategic autonomy” for Europe — that is, independence from the United States in strategic matters. He predicts the “gradual and inevitable disengagement by the United States.” His unstated reason is the fear that a President Trump will abandon Europe and NATO in favor of his strongman idol, Vladimir Putin. Thus far, response to Macron’s proposal has been less than enthusiastic.
Should Europe eventually forge its own strategic path, could we blame them? After all, Europeans possess living memory of what living under tyranny is like. Americans have no conception.
Nothing is forever, after all. Pax Romana lasted two centuries. Pax Britannica predominated for one century. Pax Americana has helped maintain global stability for almost eight decades. Its end would, I am convinced, open the door to a new Dark Age, marked by oppression and more conflict.
I vividly recall fear in people’s faces in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and other countries where I served or traveled over saying the wrong thing, consuming foreign news, or associating with a foreign diplomat. I’d met men released after years in “reeducation camp,” dispirited and drained of life. I also met dissidents who valiantly defied their repressive governments, hoping against hope to bring about change. I was hugged by more successful escapees from those regimes than I can count. Cheesy as it sounds, America has been viewed as a beacon of freedom, the proverbial “City Upon a Hill.” I met those who risked life and limb to escape tyranny with the goal of making a new life in the United States to be able to enjoy our freedom.
Now I lose sleep over the prospect of our forfeiting our own freedom. And many of our overseas friends are doing the same. Should we choose the wrong path, all bets are off for the future.
British Prime Minister, Lord North, is reported to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s all over” when told of the defeat at Yorktown in November 1781. Should November 5, 2024 go the wrong way, expect those words to be echoed in Paris, London, Tokyo, Warsaw, Seoul . . .
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.