In the short term, that may have few real consequences. Although insulting, the administration’s assessment of Europe’s weak military capabilities is correct. The resulting dependency on US military might has made European states highly vulnerable to extortion by their now-former ally.
Longer term, though, the drive to move away from buying US arms and build European will be overwhelming. Charles de Gaulle, the postwar French president who in 1966 pulled France out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s integrated command structures to avoid just such dependencies, has been vindicated from his grave.
US allies in the Asia Pacific and Middle East can only conclude that this might soon be them, too, should Trump and his officials ever decide that they aren’t paying enough for their defence or making sufficient trade concessions.
Russia and China, meanwhile, will also draw conclusions, though viewed from their perspective this offers exploitable opportunities.
POORLY QUALIFIED IDEOLOGUES
At least as important as all this is that America’s friends and foes alike are finding out what happens when you get group of poorly qualified ideologues to run the most powerful military in the world. The short answer is either recklessness or, under a more generous interpretation, a group with a steep learning curve.
John Ratcliffe, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was on the call. He never thought, however, to question the exposure to potential foreign espionage in discussing the most highly classified subject possible – an imminent military operation – on personal cell phones open to loss or hacking, and while using Signal, a public, albeit encrypted, messaging service.
It’s because of those vulnerabilities that the US government has a dedicated secure communications system. It’s less convenient than a phone chat, but that’s because it’s safe.
Ratcliffe, a Texas lawyer, had no intelligence qualifications for the job when he was appointed, either this year or for a brief stint as director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term. It shows.
