Making America Alone Again: History Offers Few Parallels for Washington’s Repudiation of Its Own Alliances – Foreign Affairs

Making America Alone Again

History Offers Few Parallels for Washington’s Repudiation of Its Own Alliances

By Margaret MacMillan, July 21, 2025

MARGARET MACMILLAN is Professor Emeritus of International History at Oxford University and the author of War: How Conflict Shaped UsandThe War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. More by Margaret MacMillan

Henry Kissinger once compared himself to the lone cowboy who rode into town to sort out the bad guys. But the U.S. secretary of state, who also served as national security adviser, knew different when it came to dealing with major powers. His hero was the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, who somehow brought together the unlikely combination of Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, Russia, and a number of even smaller allies and their incompatible leaders into the alliance that finally defeated Napoleon in 1815. As Kissinger understood, even lone rangers need friends.

It is an insight that appears to be lost on U.S. President Donald Trump. Since returning to office in January, Trump has called the United States’ closest allies cheaters and freeloaders. Japan and other Asian trading partners, he insists, are “very spoiled”; immediate North American neighbors stand accused of exporting drugs and criminals. He freely and publicly labels the leaders of some of the United States’ most important democratic partners as has-beens, weak, or dishonest, while heaping praise on autocrats he finds easier to deal with, such as Hungarian President Viktor Orban (“a very great leader”), Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele (“a great friend”), North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (“a smart guy”), and—at least until very recently—Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has called “a genius” and “very savvy” in attacking Ukraine.In what would have been unthinkable in previous administrations, including Trump’s first, the United States in February even sided against its own democratic allies and with Russia and other authoritarian states, such as North Korea and Belarus, in voting against a UN resolution that condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and upheld the latter’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Perhaps most baffling, at a time when Washington is trying to contain China and shore up U.S. defenses in the Indo-Pacific, the administration is preparing punitive tariffs on South Korea and Japan, the United States’ closest Asian allies, as well as on a sweeping list of European partners it is trying to keep away from Beijing. U.S. allies around the world are also rattled by the public musings of Trump and members of his cabinet that the so-called nuclear umbrella under which the American nuclear deterrent was a guarantee for their defense is no longer a sure thing. Such is now the level of doubt that in July, France and the United Kingdom announced a new agreement to begin providing extended nuclear deterrence in Europe for themselves, and allies such as South Korea, Poland, and even Japan have begun to contemplate acquiring their own nuclear weapons.

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