What’s on the menu? – René Pfister in Der Spiegel:

‘"The Trump administration is bent on fundamentally changing America’s relationship with its European allies and greatly reducing the U.S. role in NATO, if not pulling the U.S. out of NATO,” says John Mearsheimer, professor of political science in Chicago and a leading proponent of clear-eyed foreign policy realism.
It would, of course, be credulous to view the U.S. involvement in Europe since World War II solely as an act of charity. In a certain sense, the United Nations was founded as an instrument of power just as NATO was, an alliance founded on April 4, 1949, with the mission – as expressed by the body’s first secretary general, Hastings Ismay of Britain – being "to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The "rules-based world order” was also a means of ensuring American influence.’

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‘The novelty of Trump, in other words, is not that he, too, makes decisions that are morally dubious. But that he sees decency, rules and values as categories that only morons and losers adhere to.’

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‘"We’re going to have to get used to a world in which we – in the worst-case scenario – can no longer rely on America,” says the Berlin-based analyst Fischer. It is a message that Trump also delivered during his recent speech to Congress, just with different words. He announced his intention of making the U.S. into the most successful country in the world. "We are going to renew (the) unlimited promise of the American dream,” he said. Within this dream, Trump made exceedingly clear, there is no room for America’s former partners.’

Read the article here.

There is room for America’s former partners, as this article suggests, there is room for them: on the menu. And on the plate.

One could think these policies will backfire, and will undermine the interests of the US, but for the moment, Trump’s supporters still love, and the Democrats are whipped into obedience. The old story of the lesser evil.