U.S. Allies Are Learning that Trump’s America Is Not the ‘Indispensable Nation’

On Saturday night, President Donald Trump dined at his new D.C. hotel with the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, his daughter Ivanka, her husband and powerful senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, and Nigel Farage, the nemesis of the European Union. A few tables away, alone with his wife, sat Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the man nominally charged with charting America’s relations with the rest of the world.

Photos of the president dining with a smiling Farage, the former UKIP leader who has railed against the EU for years, and who led the populist campaign to pull Britain out of Europe, only served to reinforce growing doubts about America’s stance toward the European Union and much of the international order forged by U.S. leadership in the years after World War II.

Now, U.S. allies are resigning themselves to the likelihood that Trump’s administration will remain unpredictable and often incoherent, if not downright hostile, in its foreign policy. And they are beginning to draw up contingency plans to protect their interests on trade and security, as they adapt to a world where strong American leadership is no longer assured.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy.