Will Trump's Second Term Cause Lasting Damage to U.S. Alliances, Unlike His First?
Source: Ian Prasad Philbrick. "Trump is breaking NATO and other alliances. Could the next president fix them?." October 8, 2026. slate.com
The Gist
The author argues that unlike after Trump's first term—when alliances bounced back once he left office—this time might be different and the damage could be permanent. This is because Trump has fundamentally changed both political parties' approach to foreign policy, allied nations are increasingly electing their own Trump-like leaders, and his second-term actions have been more extreme than his first, potentially causing deeper harm to America's global standing.
Conclusion
Unlike after Trump's first term, when U.S. alliances rebounded under Biden, there is significant reason to doubt that American alliances will recover this time—Trump's second term may cause more durable and lasting damage to U.S. relationships with allies.
Premises
- Many of Trump's changes to American politics and the Republican Party seem likely to outlast him, as he has transformed personal quirks into party orthodoxy and purged dissenting Republican foreign-policy officials.
- For U.S. allies watching from outside, one Trump term may have looked like an aberration, but two terms look like a trend, suggesting Trump-style leadership will recur roughly half the time going forward given American political oscillation.
- Trump's presidencies have also changed the Democratic Party, with ambitious Democrats focusing more on domestic policy and some progressives skeptical of projecting American military power abroad, creating a bipartisan drift away from alliance-strengthening.
- Some U.S. allies are already benefiting from or adapting to Trump's transactional, right-wing approach, as evidenced by the rise of far-right, isolationist political movements in Germany, the UK, France, and Brazil that align with Trump's worldview.
- Trump's second-term actions (e.g., threatening to annex Greenland, imposing tariffs, pursuing wars that raise global prices) have been more extreme than his first term, potentially causing deeper damage to America's international reputation than the optimistic Campbell/Doshi analysis accounts for.
Assumptions
- Political trends within the U.S. (party realignment, voter sentiment) are the primary drivers of alliance stability or instability, rather than external factors like allied nations' own strategic calculations.
- The rise of right-wing populist parties abroad is causally linked to Trump's influence rather than independent domestic factors in those countries.
- Future U.S. elections will continue to produce roughly equal chances of Trump-aligned leadership, assuming no significant political realignment away from this pattern.
- Alliance resilience in the past (surviving Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) is not necessarily a reliable predictor of resilience to Trump-style disruption, because the nature of this challenge is different from past crises.