Peace President Trump is on a roll. A bad one.

Anne Applebaum discusses the current status of US-European relations in a podcast from The Bulwark. (1)

Anne Applebaum is a historian and political commentator. Some of her specific perspectives are too conservative for my taste. But she is an insightful analyst on issues of liberal democracy and how autocratic movements undermine it. She makes it clear that she speaks for herself in her public appearances. But she has also been married for decades to Radosław Tomasz "Radek" Sikorski, the current Foreign Minister of Poland’s current center-right, pro-democracy government.

The Bulwark is a non-Trump conservative website, a successor to the neoconservative Weekly Standard.

It's a favorite cliché of American pundits and especially rightwingers to mock Europe as being divided and weak. But what we are seeing right now is Europe adjusting to the new world in which the US is no longer the kind of reliable ally it was for most of the post-World War II period. And they understand that the US under Trump is an actual threat to European security. European foreign ministers won’t be talking about it in the blowhard way Trump does. But they are developing security arrangement appropriate to the Trumpista foreign policy.

Jonah Valdez describes the current situation:

Though Trump campaigned on the promise of ending foreign wars, even before the attack on Venezuela, his second term has been defined by a ruthless and interventionist approach.

He has already ordered military strikes in Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Before abducting Maduro, the U.S. military attacked a Venezuelan port, and killed more than 100 civilians in bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. In addition, Trump continues to arm Israel as it violates the ceasefire with Hamas, grinding the genocide in Gaza into a third year. (2)

Mere hours before the U.S. bombed Venezuela on Saturday, Trump threatened to attack Iran over its violent crackdowns on protesters, writing on social media that the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

And since carrying out Venezuela raid, the Trump administration has taken aim at Cuba and Colombia, hinted at intervention in Mexico, renewed annexation aspirations in Greenland, and reiterated threats to Iran. [my emphasis] (2)

In a book looking at some of the more “highbrow” Trumpistas in a chapter of her new book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, Laura Field points to an unappreciated aspect of Trump’s foreign policy ideology. (Although calling it an “ideology” may make it sound more sophisticated than it is.)

On an abstract level the dynamic goes something like this: American conservatism, at its ideological core, tends to be isolationist, socially traditionalist, and devoted to small government. This was the basic character of what was called the “Old Right”—which describes the conservatism of the first half of the twentieth century. (The libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard called the Old Right “a coalition of fury and despair against the enormous acceleration of Big Government brought about by the New Deal.”) When conservatives win elections and have to govern, however, this ideological core has to soften: They make compromises and tend to moderate, gradually calcifying into a more centrist, power-wielding “establishment.” …

Barry Goldwater’s movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s took this shape—i.e., of an extremist flank accusing older conservatism of weakness and betrayal, and claiming that they, the true believers, could do a better job. Something similar happened with Pat Buchanan and the Paleoconservatives in the 1990s, and then with Newt Gingrich and with the Tea Party, too. To the extent that such efforts succeed, the party shifts rightward. And often the rhetoric ratchets up: To maintain the affections of the movement, the true believers become more hardened and uncompromising, their rhetoric more militant and violent. (pp. 11-12) [my emphasis]

The brand of far-right anti-interventionism tends to be a continuation of Old Right isolationism. Rhetorically, it tends to be skeptical of foreign interventions. But when we look at its policy orientation, it not about avoiding “foreign entanglements.” It’s about applying a militaristic foreign policy with a complete contempt for international law and for what Democrats and whatever non-Trumpist conservatives are still out there still call “the rules-based international order.”

One of my favorite examples of this often-convoluted perspective is a book from an author who had identified with the New Left criticism of US imperialism in the 1960s and early 1970s but was repositioning himself as rightwing-friendly: Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (1975) by Ronald Radosh.

Former President Herbert Hoover also wrote a lenghty isolationist treatise published after his death, Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath (2011).

Tucker Carlson recently scolded the British rightwinger Piers Morgan over what Tucker sees as the dastardly British intervention in the Second Worth War. (3) This kind of fascist-friendly perspective is the core foreign policy outlook of the Trumpistas.

And, of course, Trump’s political mentor was Roy Cohn, New York City mob lawyer and hardcore Old Right ideologue. He was celebrated for the dubious prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and served as the chief counsel for Joe McCarthy’s Senate witchhunt committee. Trump’s militaristic isolationist nationalism comes straight out of the Old Right ideological swamp:

Cohn had many high-profile clients, including several organized-crime bosses, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Cohn also served as a lawyer for popular New York City nightclub Studio 54, which he was known to frequent. Notably, Cohn also defended Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, against charges of racial discrimination in their apartment rentals in 1973. (4)

Trump likes to drop bombs. And take bribes from foreign leaders. And to make a dramatic show for the news. But global foreign policy strategy? Forget it. We’ve seen that over the past year in his incoherent, bumbling diplomacy over the Russia-Ukraine War.

The German Green Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sergey Lagodinsky writes in Euronews about Trump’s threats to Denmark/Greenland appearing under the eye-catching headline, “EU troops might be needed to stop a US showdown in Greenland.”

To counter this scenario, European troops, Danish or otherwise, should be positioned in Greenland in advance. This would raise the threshold for presenting Europe with accomplished facts on the ground.

Second, clarity about consequences is essential. No one believes a war between the US and the EU is desirable or winnable.

But a military move against the EU would have devastating consequences for defence cooperation, markets, and global trust in the United States — not just in an administration, but in the country itself. Preparing a list of consequences is grim but necessary. (5)

Notes:

(1) Anne Applebaum: Europe Is Preparing for an America That Turns Hostile-The Bulwark Podcast 01/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/2tw9_2ltdRU?si=_EFqSlg-GO2wlwB9> (Accessed: 2026-06-01).

(2) Valdez, Jonah (2026): The List Countries Trump Is Threatening With War Keeps Growing. The Intercept 01/06/2026. <https://theintercept.com/2026/01/06/trump-wars-venezuela-colombia-cuba-iran/> (Accessed: 2026-06-01).

(3) Tucker Carlson CLASHES With Piers Morgan Over WW2, State Of GREAT BRITAIN. The Hill YouTube channel 12/01/2025. <https://youtu.be/2Ut6Quzxgfc?si=kug13oGkGAZX1ek9> (Accessed: 2026-10-01).

(4) Rosenfeld, Jordana. "Roy Cohn". Encyclopedia Britannica 11/28/2025, <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Cohn> (Accessed: 2026-10-01).

(5) Euronews 09.01.2026. <https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/09/eu-troops-might-be-needed-to-stop-a-us-showdown-in-greenland> (Accessed: 2026-10-01).