First of all, yes I do imply with the above title that the United States is not a civilized country. You can give me a billion evidences to rebuke me, but I insist that, if a government agency posts such a message to its Indian citizens:
“Hey Mr. Singh! Get off our road! America doesn’t want you!"
Then this country by no means can be regarded as a civilized country.
Period.
Is Trump’s America an ally of Europe or Russia?
Since 1945, America’s democratic allies have operated on an assumption so fundamental that it was rarely questioned: whatever disagreements might arise with Washington, the United States would remain the ultimate strategic backstop of the democratic world.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, that assumption has gone.
America’s erstwhile allies are facing the gravest security challenge since the Cold War. With Russia intensifying its war against Ukraine, NATO is all but certain that Russia will soon launch some form of shooting attack on it. In the Indo-Pacific, China is building jet fighter runways on one of the illegally occupied islands in the biggest expansion in the last ten years. Yet at precisely this moment, Trump started a war that no adults in the room wanted and got the United States bogged down in the quagmire.
Facing a shooting war with Russia, Germany urgently needs weapons such as Patriot missiles, which it had ordered from the US, and was told that, due to the war with Iran consuming most of America’s stockpiles, delivery will be delayed by five years.
At the same time, Trump is drastically reducing American troops in Europe.
I know it may sound radical to many, but if you were a new visitor to Earth, judging from what Trump is doing, wouldn’t it be natural for you to assume that Trump and Putin are allies?
The root cause
Trump once famously boasted during his 2016 campaign that his supporters were so loyal that he could stand on Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody and not lose voters.
These voters are the problem, not Trump, and, because of them, this radical swing is not a one-off aberration, but the beginning of America’s permanent moral and cognitive decline.
These angry mobs have always been there, but their numbers have greatly multiplied in the last decade, partly due to the economic pain brought by the transition from manufacturing to a digital economy, but mainly due to the decline of the Christian faith—more and more people are starting to feel that no one cares about their difficulties, and they desire a Jason Statham-style quick fix:
Their chosen demagogue throws to them some scapegoats, then they beat the hell out of them, then everything will be fine.
America’s erstwhile ally—democratic Europe—was one of the scapegoats.
Another shift also contributed to this swing. In the past, the elites controlled society’s narrative via newspapers and television. Now, using social media, these angry mobs have wrested control of narratives from the elites into their own hands.
Therefore, the adults in the room—America’s erstwhile allies like democratic Europe, the UK, Australia and Japan—understand that the good old days when this giant acted with strategic maturity, sophistication and constancy are gone.
Although they don’t spell it out—there is zero need for the petulant kid who is the president of the world’s most powerful country to hear their plan—the adults have started a major movement of de-Americanization.
The civilized world is de-Americanizing
Silently, something very substantial is happening.
1. Europe is constructing its own air and missile shield
Europe already possesses excellent air-defence technology. France and Italy have SAMP/T NG and MBDA’s ASTER missiles; Germany produces IRIS-T. The problem has been scale and integration — and above all, dependence on American Patriot systems.
That is now changing. France and Italy are deploying SAMP/T NG, while Denmark selected the system in 2025. In February 2025, France, Italy and Britain ordered nearly 1,000 additional ASTER missiles, with MBDA committing €2.4 billion to expand production between 2025 and 2029. The European Sky Shield Initiative is also bringing countries together to procure systems such as Germany’s IRIS-T SLM.
The objective is simple:
If America has Patriots available, excellent.
If America does not, Europe must still be able to shoot the missile down.
2. Europe is building sovereign space capabilities
Modern warfare does not begin with the tank. It begins hundreds of kilometres above it.
Satellites provide communications, surveillance, navigation, missile warning and battlefield intelligence. An autonomous European military that cannot independently see the battlefield or communicate securely is not genuinely autonomous.
That dependency is now being reduced. In October 2024, the European Commission awarded the IRIS² satellite communications programme to the SpaceRISE consortium, involving SES, Eutelsat, Airbus, Thales Alenia Space and OHB. The system is planned to provide secure European satellite communications from 2030.
In February 2026, the EU’s GOVSATCOM system became operational, pooling secure satellite communications for European governments.
Europe is therefore building the eyes, ears and communications infrastructure needed to defend itself without assuming America will always provide them.
3. Europe is developing independent long-range strike capabilities
Europe needs the ability to destroy missile launchers, ammunition depots, command centres, air bases and logistics infrastructure far behind the battlefield.
In 2024, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Britain launched the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA). The programme covers weapons ranging from 300–500 km to systems exceeding 2,000 km, including long-range missiles and low-cost one-way attack drones.
In February 2026, the six countries signed a further agreement to accelerate their development and procurement.
For decades, Europe could largely rely on America for this capability.
It is now beginning to build it for itself.
4. European nuclear deterrence is quietly becoming more European
This may ultimately be the most profound change of all.
Europe already possesses two nuclear powers: Britain and France. Their arsenals are far smaller than America’s, but Russia does not need to believe that Europe can destroy Russia ten times over. Deterrence requires Russia to believe that attacking Europe would impose an unacceptable cost.
In July 2025, Britain and France signed “Lancaster House 2.0″, deepening cooperation between their independent nuclear forces and establishing a permanent UK-France Nuclear Steering Group.
France and Germany are also discussing the role of French nuclear deterrence in European security.
This does not mean that the American nuclear umbrella has disappeared.
But Europe is now seriously asking a question that would have been almost unthinkable only a few years ago:
What happens if one day the American nuclear umbrella simply isn’t there?
The fact that Europe is seriously asking that question is itself de-Americanisation.
5. Europe is preparing for the next war without America
Ukraine has transformed European military thinking. Cheap drones can destroy equipment costing millions of dollars; electronic warfare can cripple sophisticated weapons; and modern war consumes ammunition on a scale that peacetime armies never imagined.
Europe is responding with money on a scale that would have been unthinkable before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The EU’s 2025 ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 plan aims to mobilise up to €800 billion in additional defence spending, including €150 billion in EU-backed SAFE loans. At least 65% of eligible procurement costs must come from the EU, Ukraine or other eligible European countries.
The EU is also putting €6 billion into its Drone Alliance with Ukraine, while European ammunition production has increased by 40%.
This is more than rearmament.
Europe is rebuilding the industrial capacity to manufacture the weapons, ammunition, drones and interceptors required for a prolonged war.
Poland and the Baltic states, sitting directly on Europe’s eastern flank, understand this particularly clearly. The geographical centre of gravity of European defence is moving eastward.
The petulant kid may intend to use the withdrawal of American troops as revenge against the adults’ despise on him. But it only serves to increase European votes’ support for the military build up, which makes America less and less relevant in this birthplace of western civilization.
6. Canada is also de-Americanizing
Canada is taking the same approach economically.
On 1 October 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the Pacific Link pipeline — a proposed approximately 1,200-km pipeline carrying about one million barrels of oil per day from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific coast, opening a direct route to Asian markets instead of sending virtually all Canadian oil south to the United States.
Canada is also expanding trade through the CPTPP and CETA. Since the CPTPP came into force, Canadian merchandise trade with its original seven Indo-Pacific partners has increased 42.9%. Since CETA, Canada-EU merchandise trade has increased 59.8%.
At home, Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy targets lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earths. Its 2026 economic plan allocates C$5 billion to critical minerals and C$5.7 billion to trade diversification and infrastructure.
And Canada is strengthening its Arctic sovereignty: Ottawa announced C$32 billion in March 2026 for infrastructure upgrades at four northern military locations.
7. Europe is building its own payment system
Europe has long depended heavily on American payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard. That is now being challenged directly.
In September 2026, payment systems from Spain’s Bizum, Italy’s Bancomat, Belgium-based Wero, Portugal’s MB WAY and Norway’s Vipps MobilePay joined together to form the European Network for Payments (ENP). The network will connect payment systems covering about 130 million users across 13 countries, initially for person-to-person payments and later for online and physical retail.
The EU is simultaneously developing the digital euro, with the European Central Bank explicitly saying that it will strengthen Europe’s autonomy in payment infrastructure, where Europe currently relies on international providers.
Europe is therefore beginning to build an alternative to one of the most deeply embedded pieces of American economic infrastructure.
8. Europe is trying to free itself from American cloud and technology infrastructure
This one is particularly powerful because it is very close to the heart of modern economic power.
In April 2026, the European Commission awarded €180 million in contracts for sovereign cloud services to four European-led providers: OVHcloud/Clever Cloud, STACKIT, Scaleway and Proximus/S3NS. The contracts cover EU institutions for up to six years and were designed specifically to reduce dependence on non-European technology providers.
And this is not merely a procurement decision. In June 2026, the Commission announced a broader Tech Sovereignty package, including the Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips Act 2.0. The Commission says the EU currently relies on non-EU countries for more than 80% of key digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property. Digital Strategy
The message is remarkably clear:
Europe does not want its governments, data and critical infrastructure to depend on technology companies it cannot ultimately control.
9. Australia is diversifying away from dependence on the American market
Australia has been expanding FTAs with India, the UK and the EU, strengthening economic ties with Southeast Asia and participating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
In June 2026, Australia’s Trade 2040 Taskforce formally identified trade diversification and economic security as one of its seven strategic pillars. The government is also putting $13 million into deeper engagement with Southeast Asia, including the Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040. DFAT
Australia is not cutting America out. It is cutting its dependency.
10. Japan is building a defence industry with Britain and Italy
Japan, Britain and Italy are developing the GCAP next-generation fighter through a joint organisation, the Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation (GIGO).
The significance goes beyond one aircraft.
Japan is developing an advanced combat-aircraft capability jointly with two European powers, creating a defence-industrial relationship that does not run through the United States.
And this is exactly the sort of thing that would have been politically difficult to imagine when Japan’s defence relationship with America was treated as almost absolute.
The consequence
I had a rough childhood. I rubbed shoulders with all kinds of street kids, participated in a lot of street fights, and witnessed even more. A gang of three, with a strong and ferocious leading boy, almost always routed a gang of eight or ten that lacked such a leader. All that ferocious kid needed to do was to beat down one of the opponents with cruelty, and the rest of them would just disperse. Yes, if they acted as one, two smaller kids could easily defeat the stronger one, but the problem was that they couldn’t act as one.
The dynamics of alliances in wars are almost identical.
That is why Europe’s coming war with Russia is not a foregone conclusion—their combined wealth, industrial capacity and military capabilities are many times greater than Russia’s, but they are separate countries, while Russia is that big and ferocious boy. It is still possible that Russia beats down the first of them with horrific cruelty, and the rest become intimidated and lose the courage to fight.
That is why, no matter how much European countries invested in their own militaries, they would always rely heavily on America if possible. America is their own strong boy. They can always rally around this big boy and not be intimidated by the big boy on the opposing side. America may not even do much of the fighting; the psychological assurance is priceless in a world war.
So, if any other normal person like George W. Bush were the president, he would have forced the Europeans to increase their own military spending without showing them the middle finger and backstabbing them—like starting a useless war without consulting them, exhausting America’s expensive ordnance and delaying its delivery to Europe for five years; like inviting Russia to the G20; like pulling out US troops right before an imminent Russian attack on NATO.
He could simply have worked with the Europeans to come up with a schedule to reduce America’s military strength and spending in Europe while the Europeans built up their own strength to fill the void in a well-organized manner, all the time assuring them that America would always be their staunchest ally and, if the dire need arose, would come and defend them.
This would have achieved the same goal of reducing America’s burden of defending Europe, at the meantime words spoken by America would have carried the same weight and influence in Europe.
What Trump’s America actually did was consistently backstab and insult Europe, clearly demonstrating that America sees Europe as some kind of an annoyance or even foe and would much prefer Russia as its partner in the new world. It achieved the same goal of forcing Europe to defend itself, but America lost its leadership and influence in Europe and the world.
People say that America’s soft power, which its wise leaders of past generations carefully built, is more powerful than its military. Trump’s America destroyed a large part of it in two years.
Recently, Trump asked Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. Ukraine said OK, then intensified the attacks. This is just one more example of America’s dwindling influence in Europe.
The endgame
With its global influence, moral and cognitive capacity dwindling, America’s decline will continue. I had a long and deep article, America’s Decline — and Why I Still Have Hope, dedicated on this topic.
Unless the midterm elections deliver an overwhelmingly crushing defeat to the puppet of the big bully—what used to be known as the Grand Old Party. If that happens, it will show the world that the American race has woken up from a psychotic seizure and swears that it won’t happen again.
If that doesn’t happen, America will continue its moral and cognitive decline. The technology and economic sectors may remain resilient for a while, but there has never been a country in history that has undergone such a decline while keeping its innovation and economy vibrant. The virus will spread.
Europe has shown the world its depth and sophistication, deeply rooted in Greek philosophies, Roman civilization and the splendid elegance since the Renaissance, by holding on to its graceful values while facing huge challenges such as an influx of Muslim migrants. Upstarts with their extreme wealth may appear as nobles for a short while, but when they face such inconveniences, the crimson-embroidered celestial pallium falls off, revealing their upstart nature.
Europe will be the future beacon of Western values.
