Trump is Hellbent on Destroying the Nato Alliance

• Trump is Hellbent on Destroying the Nato Alliance
  by Martin Kettle, https://www.theguardian.com/international , 27 June 2018
  The US president’s increasing hostility shows he has little interest in the transatlantic partnership
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  In the words of Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” For more than 70 years, Europe has had a plan. It was to hold together against Russia and rely on the alliance with the United States. Now Europe has been punched in the mouth by Donald Trump. Europeans must therefore ask themselves the question: has Trump’s US become a hostile power? If the answer to that question is yes, the consequences for Europe – and for Britain – would be enormous. That’s why so many policymakers and politicians prefer not to ask it.
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  But as Der Spiegel put it last month: “The west as we once knew it no longer exists.” Even the Washington-based German Marshall Fund, a bastion of postwar Atlanticism, now talks about Trump’s “overt hostility”. Incredible as it may seem to those who grew up in a Europe and a Britain that took the US alliance for granted, the plan that has worked since the fall of Hitler can no longer be relied upon.
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  That recognition is not yet shared equally clearly between the European states, but it is moving that way. Europe was naturally wary of Trump at first. It placed great store on getting him to give the right reassurances, to shake hands on the right occasions, and make the right visits. But it was wasted effort and those naive days are long past – as Theresa May secretly knows better than anyone.
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