Donald Trump's confrontational approach to NATO allies contains a legitimate core demand - but his chaotic execution has undermined the progress his own administration has achieved, a new Foreign Affairs analysis has found, as "Hvylya" reports.
Hugo Bromley, an Applied History Research Fellow at Cambridge's Centre for Geopolitics, argued that "the Trump administration is right that the transatlantic relationship needs to be restructured." The universalist, legalistic approach to international trade pursued in the 1990s through the WTO is no longer appropriate in an era of great-power competition, particularly given China's systematic theft of intellectual property and anticompetitive industrial policies.
The new trade deals Washington signed with the EU and the United Kingdom in 2025, focused on economic security and tackling Chinese overcapacity, represented a step in the right direction. But the president's other actions have wiped out these gains. Trump's repeated willingness to accept Putin's manipulations at face value has baffled and frustrated both Ukraine and its European partners. His chaotic approach to negotiation has undermined the very trade deals his administration negotiated.
The most destabilizing move, according to Bromley, has been Trump's push to acquire Greenland - a demand that has "forced NATO partners to question the fundamental assumptions on which the alliance is based." Combined with Trump's warning that failing to assist in the Strait of Hormuz would be "very bad for the future of NATO," the message to European allies has been unmistakable.
Bromley cautioned, however, that the European reaction - calls to become a "global power" independent of Washington - risks a catastrophe for both sides of the Atlantic. In the short term, he argued, there is simply no alternative to the United States providing the expensive, technologically advanced capabilities needed to deter Russia.
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