Trumps Bedrohung für Europa: Seine erste Amtszeit stellte die transatlantischen Beziehungen auf die Probe – aber seine zweite würde sie zerstören

[SS from essay by Liana Fix, Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations and an Adjunct Professor at the Center for German and European Studies and the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University; and Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Nonresident Senior Associate in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.]

In February, former U.S. President Donald Trump encouraged Russia’s leadership to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that does not spend two percent of its GDP on defense. Trump has made similar incendiary comments before. Europe should take his threats seriously. He is once again the presumptive Republican candidate for president of the United States, and he leads Joe Biden, the incumbent, in many recent polls.
Should he be elected to a second term, Trump’s attitudes toward Ukraine, Russia, and NATO—and his mercurial and self-interested mindset—will be pivotal for the war in Ukraine. Trump will likely disrupt the entire transatlantic relationship far more than he did during his first presidency. Although European leaders met his election in 2016 with panic, the policies he pursued were more or less conventional. He did not withdraw from NATO, and his administration delivered lethal military aid to Ukraine that proved crucial to the country’s self-defense after Russia’s invasion. Between 2017 and 2021, not much got permanently broken in the transatlantic relationship.

If Trump can end the war in a day, why did fail to end the war during his entire presidency