March 26, 2025

You are on your own.

That is essentially the lesson many US allies have taken from the events of the last few weeks, after President Donald Trump and his administration expressed unwillingness to defend European allies “if they don’t pay” and stopped all military aid and intelligence sharing with war-torn Ukraine.

Recent text messages from a group chat of US senior-most national-security officials are at the center of a US national security scandal—because the editor of The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently included in the chat, which featured detailed information about US plans to attack Houthi targets in Yemen. But the vitriol toward Europe was also palpable in that chat, showing European leaders how the Trump administration talks about them behind closed doors.

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