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11:16 30.12.2025 •
The more Trump concentrates on his own backyard, the more the US retreat from Europe will gather pace
Photo: AP
This was the year the old world order ended. The order that had defeated Nazi Germany, the greatest evil the modern world has known, then went on to see off Soviet communism. The order that rebuilt – from the carnage, ruins and dictatorships of the Second World War – prosperous Western European democracies. Then embraced the new democracies of Eastern Europe, writes Andrew Neil, a ‘Daily Mail’ columnist.
The order that, for all its many lapses in living up to its principles, placed liberal democracy, human rights and the prosperity of the people at the core of its purpose, leading to the greatest rise in global living standards these past eight decades the world has ever known.
The order in which Britain played a pivotal and honourable role, which we’ve now forgotten as we wallow behind our veil of woes. But in which America was always the essential ally for all involved.
The old order was no doubt in need of a reboot, a recalibration, a refocusing for the 21st century. Instead, it is being swept away, for no good reason, by an American president with no knowledge of history, little grasp of geopolitics and scant regard for the principles of democracy and freedom which made the world a safer place the more they were adopted across the globe.
A president who thinks it is no part of US foreign policy to make the world a better place, whose only concern is furthering the narrow, short-term interest of an isolationist America and what he regards as its surrounding satrapies.
If that means supping with tyrants and dictators with the shortest of spoons, while turning on loyal, democratic allies of long standing, then so be it. If it also facilitates lining the pockets of Washington’s ruling family, then so much the better.
To be replaced by what? We do not yet know for sure. No doubt the coming year will improve our comprehension of what is in store. Those contours that we can already discern are not encouraging.
Next year will hasten America’s retreat from Europe, which will increasingly be left to its own devices, as President Trump focuses his attention and American power on the Western Hemisphere – where he has imperial ambitions.
The more Trump concentrates on his own backyard, the more the US retreat from Europe will gather pace
Argentina is already in hock to Washington, with $20 billion of US support for its currency. Canada will remain under pressure to fall in line with whatever is Trump’s latest whim. Even Greenland is still in his sights. He’s just appointed a new envoy who has described his job as ‘a volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US’. The Danes, under whose control Greenland falls, are increasingly nervous.
The more Trump concentrates on his own backyard, the more the US retreat from Europe will gather pace. I find it astonishing that European leaders have still to grasp the immensity of the geopolitical shift that is now under way.
It isn’t just that the European leg of NATO can no longer count on US military when the chips are down – the fact is that Trump’s America is no longer even on our side, a harsh reality that will become apparent as next year unfolds.
Yet European NATO still bases its defence planning on massive US assistance, even as Trump pushes a version of a peace plan for Ukraine originally drafted by the Kremlin.
The coming year will see the effective end of US financial and military aid to Ukraine. It already started to dry up this year.
If Europe means what it says about standing by Ukraine then, in 2026, it will have to become Europe’s war, without American back-up. Despite all the supportive rhetoric it is by no means clear Europe’s leaders are up for this.
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