"America's friends will never trust the US again" Bloomberg opinion

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By Andreas Kluth
9/16/2025

… Consider those military drones that Russia just sent into Poland, where NATO jets shot them down. It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin was testing NATO’s air defenses, crisis procedures and resolve, feeling increasingly confident - especially after that cuddly Alaska summit - that Trump is as wobbly on NATO’s mutual-defense commitment as he is indulgent toward his strongman BFF in the Kremlin.

…If the Polish episode highlights Trump’s inconstancy within NATO and the Qatari event shows his weakness toward Benjamin Netanyahu, America’s actions in Greenland point to downright malice. That semi-autonomous territory belongs to Denmark, one of America’s oldest and tightest allies. (Per capita, Denmark suffered the highest casualty rate in the coalition that joined the US in Afghanistan, for example.) And yet Trump keeps threatening to seize Greenland “one way or the other.” Last month, the Danish foreign minister summoned the top US diplomat in Copenhagen, for the second time this year, to protest covert operations that had come to light. Some Americans had infiltrated Greenland to make lists of people who might turn against Denmark and support a US takeover. This is not friendly.

… The list of friends and allies scorned, humiliated and disdained continues: Trump wants to annex Canada, which shares with the US the world’s longest undefended border and now views Washington as one of its top threats. His intelligence director has blocked information about Russia from going to the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing arrangement with Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada that is one of America’s most intimate and useful alliances (and has apparently saved many American lives by foiling terrorist plots).

… Some Americans are aware that the current direction points toward disaster. I went to see Gregory Meeks this week. He’s the ranking member and former chairman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee…I asked Meeks what, among all the problems in his inbox, worries him most. He pondered that for a long minute, during which my gaze drifted to the window behind his desk, which perfectly framed the Capitol in all its splendor. “What keeps me up most,” he finally answered, is “whether or not our friends and allies will ever trust the United States again.” The way I heard it, the question was rhetorical. I fear the answer is simple and sad: They won’t.

https://iol.co.za/ios/opinion/2025-09-16-americas-friends-will-never-trust-the-us-again/

Also the author on YouTube about this column
https://youtube.com/shorts/1va-4ZO-9GM?si=biOulJGvywNGuSHl