Trump pressures NATO allies while courting rivals

Trump squeezes allies and smiles at rivals

Why does the US president treat Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang with kid gloves while threatening Ottawa, Copenhagen, and Berlin? The pattern is so blatant it no longer looks like a miscalculation. According to debate messages, he calls Canada a '51st State' and its prime minister a 'governor'; he warns Denmark it keeps Greenland 'by its orange agallas' and doesn't rule out force; he announces he's taking the Panama Canal; he promises marines against the drug trade to Mexico; he asks the UK prime minister to resign and Elon Musk launches a poll on military intervention; he wants to tutor Germany's elections; he calls Spain BRICS and threatens tariffs if it doesn't raise the Atlantic tithe.

Meanwhile, with the so-called axis of evil, it's all goodwill: private praise for Maduro as 'strong,' a desire to meet Kim Jong-un, willingness to meet 'immediately' with Pilingui, and a public plea to Xi Jinping to help close the Ukraine war. The conclusion that imposes itself in any cold analysis is uncomfortable: the enemy is respected; the vassal is trampled.

The pattern no one disputes

The first current of analysis holds that Trump hates the weak and admires the strong in whom he sees himself reflected. It's the classic playground bully: he despises those who crawl and compromises with those who stand up to him, because with the latter he eventually shares the recess. Under this logic, NATO is not a club of allies, but a crew of sycophants that can be squeezed without cost.

Some go further and read the pattern as a liquidation of the inherited order. Traditional allies are controlled by elites Trump considers his internal enemies; rivals, by contrast, are adversaries with whom he can negotiate face-to-face. Hence, belligerence is directed against partners and diplomacy against rivals.

A third reading points to pure transaction. The US military-industrial complex has gotten rich off the Ukraine war and now needs another source of income: forcing NATO members to raise spending on US equipment. The modus operandi is old: if you don't pay, I tariff you; if you pay, I sell to you.

What does the US gain by treating partners this way?

It gains money and freedom of movement. If allies are clients, not equals, Washington can focus on its own affairs—intervening where convenient, without NATO or UN constraints—and leave Europe to bear the cost of its own defense. The calculation is simple: a multipolar world does not reward the global policeman; it rewards those who charge for protection.

The problem is that this treatment erodes the trust holding the alliance together. Each threat to Canada, each slight to Denmark, each poll on intervening in the UK is another sustancia ilegal. And cracks in a military structure are not fixed with a summit.

The European response: rearmament and less sycophancy

On the other side of the Atlantic, the conclusion is making its way with blows: Europe needs to defend itself. The idea of a European army with its own armament—that no one can leave on land by pressing a button—has returned to the forefront. It is no longer a desk utopia: it is a bill someone will have to pay.

Internal criticism is not lacking. Some argue that the EU is a sham designed by Washington after World War II and that Germany and the Nordics don't care about Southern Europe. Others point to silent dismantling: without a fishing fleet, with agriculture and fishing destroyed, and wild deindustrialization, Spain appears as an example of what happens when you confuse being an ally with being a client.

The question hanging in the air is whether this differential treatment is a strategy or a symptom. If it's a strategy, someone should explain the benefit. If it's a symptom, the diagnosis is worse: the US no longer distinguishes between the ally who supports it and the rival it antiestéticars.

Can Atlantic trust be rebuilt?

With these twigs, little. Trust is not rebuilt with joint statements or summit photos; it is rebuilt with facts. And the facts, to date, go in the opposite direction: more pressure on partners, more winks to rivals.

There remains the option that it's all a negotiating pose, a tug-of-war to extract concessions. It's possible. But even in that case, the message engraved is the same: to those who kneel, you charge; to those who stand, you show respect. And with that manual, the next NATO summit promises to be an exercise in realism or humiliation, depending on how the orange sunrise breaks.