In a recent Politico poll, 57 percent of Canadians, 40 percent of Germans, and 42 percent of Britons said Xi Jinping's China was more dependable than Donald Trump's United States. The numbers mark a sharp decline in how America's closest partners perceive Washington's reliability.
Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has cited the polling data in The Atlantic as evidence that the alliance system America built over eight decades is unraveling in real time, "Hvylya" reports.
In the past, Kagan noted, alliance relationships survived waves of public disapproval because governments knew the United States remained committed to their defense. Today that assumption no longer holds. Trump has repeatedly made clear that if he is unhappy with an ally, he will withdraw American protection. He temporarily cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine to punish it for refusing to bend to Moscow. He has warned Japan and South Korea to pay the United States for protection.
The unintended effect of the Iran war may be driving regional players to seek other protectors. Trump himself invited the Chinese to help open the Strait of Hormuz. Gulf states are already courting Beijing and Moscow. Israel sold management of a container terminal in Haifa to a Chinese company despite objections from the U.S. Navy.
Kagan noted that even Israel - practically alone among American allies - refused to join sanctions against Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. When Benjamin Netanyahu ran for reelection in 2019, some of his campaign posters showed him shaking hands with Putin under the tagline "A Different League."
Trump's tactics with allies, Kagan wrote, consist almost entirely of threats: to tariff them, to abandon them, and in the case of Greenland, to use force to seize their territory. "Trump doesn't want allies - he wants vassals."
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on how China and Russia failed the alliance test, pushing the Global South to rethink Beijing's reliability.