BUILDING THEtransatlantic partnership centred onNATOtook decades of troop deployments, joint exercises and steadfast signalling of an unbreakable commitment to its central tenet: that an attack on one would be an attack on all. Yet a weeklong whirlwind left that trust in tatters, as President Donald Trump’s administrationoverturnedalmost 80 years of American policy towards Europe. It culminated in the president repeating Kremlin propaganda points as he falsely blamed Ukraine for starting its war with Russia and called Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, a “dictator”.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Present at the destruction”
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