According to Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Donald Trump’s retreat from alliance politics is a swing within a very old American pendulum — but warns that the illiberal forces driving it are not confined to the United States, and may soon reshape European politics too.
The argument: Tracing US grand strategy from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “great arsenal of democracy” to the present, the scholar recalls that Washington’s global role was never a given. The Founders saw America as a model to be emulated, not exported; the interventionist turn came only with the Spanish-American War, Woodrow Wilson, and, decisively, Pearl Harbor — after which the US became what he calls a “crusader state,” going into the world to change it. Trump, in this reading, marks the sharpest reversal of that trajectory since the 1930s.
Why it matters: The analysis lands on Trump’s hostility toward allies — threats to leave NATO, public insults aimed at European leaders such Giorga Meloni, Friederich Merz, Keith Starmer and Emmanuel Macron — which the scholar describes as among the most dangerous elements of the current foreign-policy agenda. Yet he draws a crucial distinction with past isolationist cycles: “Trump not only refrains from spreading democracy abroad; he threatens democracy inside the United States. That is unprecedented.”
The alliance question: The scholar expects a post-Trump correction: whoever follows will likely return to a more traditional defence of America’s alliance network — provided Europe and Asia keep shouldering a fairer share of the burden. Rebalancing, in other words, is the price of transatlantic continuity.
Political fault lines: The caveat is significant. Within the MAGA movement, he sees a deeper, structural hostility toward Europe — personified by the vice president, who allegedly views the continent as a cultural “other”: too liberal, too secular, too open to immigration. Should that wing capture the next presidency, the transatlantic outlook becomes far less predictable.
The context: Kupchan’s warning comes as Trump continues to sharpen his criticism of America’s allies. On Friday, the US president argued that Washington should no longer pursue what he described as a “one sided” relationship with NATO, claiming that “They were not there for us!!!”
- In a post on Truth Social, he paired the message with a graphic highlighting the United States’ far higher defence spending than other major allies, reinforcing his long-standing argument that the alliance lacks reciprocity and that Europe should shoulder a greater share of the burden.
The bigger picture: The deeper warning is that America’s problem is becoming everyone’s problem.
- The scholar fears that Reform UK, the Rassemblement National and the AfD will thrive in coming European elections for the same reasons MAGA did: socioeconomic dislocation, the collapse of the industrial-era social contract, amplified by social media and anti-immigration sentiment.
- The question of fidelity to liberal democracy, he argues, now applies as much to Italy, Germany, France, the UK and Hungary as to Washington.
What it signals: Full American detachment is impossible — “the US cannot raise the drawbridge as it could in the nineteenth century.” But the West’s real test may no longer be whether America returns as a pillar of the liberal order. Asked whether it will, the scholar answers: “I think so, and I hope so. But I don’t know.”
