Why American allies are terrified of a Trump re-election

Why American allies are terrified of a Trump re-election

By: Rachel Marsden

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – The Western establishment is desperate for a Trump loss on Nov. 5 – to the point of tacitly supporting pro-Harris foreign election meddling.

“I have nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the US in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” wrote the governing UK Labour Party’s head of operations on social media, offering to arrange their housing.

Britain’s Telegraph has reported that the Democrats were offering these foreign campaign "volunteers" free accommodation. Just imagine what the reaction would be if Russian President Vladimir Putin had sent a team of political operatives over to America to actively campaign for former (and potential future) President Donald Trump, and the Republican Party was hosting them.

But when the interference is by a Western ally to the benefit of Democratic contender, Vice President Kamala Harris, the usual government actors who typically fly off the handle, deploying a firehose of sanctions at any whiff of potential foreign meddling, are suddenly nowhere to be found.

It’s clear what side all of these actors are on: Team Establishment. A Trump re-election threatens their well-oiled and organized system. Odds are that Trump would end up tossing wrenches into it that result in its levers no longer working as they’re supposed to.

When establishment Republicans or Democrats take office, it’s usually just a matter of rotating in or out the same known players who all pat each other on the back when crossing paths at the Capital Grille, and whose connections to similar establishment fixtures in other countries help secure the status quo that they call the “rules-based order.” But Trump could end up sidelining them, threatening the entire Western crony system.

Western allies’ real concern is that they may not know whom exactly to pick up the phone and call in a Trump administration the next time they want to discuss doing something stupid and against the interests of their own citizens under the pretext of virtue signaling their usual "Western values" propaganda while behaving in a way that contradicts it. And what if a Trump administration doesn’t take their call at all? How will they all coordinate their talking points if Washington suddenly stops dictating them?

An “America First” Trump agenda could also leave allies having to explain to their own citizens why they haven’t also prioritized their own interests. For instance, if Trump abruptly just writes off the conflict in Ukraine, then there’s a risk of peace breaking out. How would European nations defend having impoverished their own citizens with Ukraine-related policies that touch on everything – from farming and industry to energy and cost of living – if they (like the Biden administration) had spent the past few years insisting that a Ukrainian battlefield victory against Russia was an absolute non-negotiable necessity to prevent Putin from personally rocking up to a bistro on Paris’ Left Bank? If peace could just be a matter of simply not doing more war, then Europeans might wonder if all those short cold showers or freezing winters that they were encouraged to endure by European officials (so Putin could be deprived of lunch money from energy sales) were worth anything at all.

The Ukraine fiasco has turned into a giant pretext for washing public funds into the pockets of weapons makers – largely American ones. Former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi even admonished European Union nations in a recent “EU Competitiveness” (or, rather, lack thereof) report, suggesting that European officials were so dumb that they couldn’t even do the military industrial racket right, since they were overwhelmingly buying US weapons.

In 2023, Poland was one of the top buyers of US weapons, and also the recipient of billions in “loans” (with interest) from the US taxpayer to keep buying them – the latest $2 billion having been awarded in July 2024.

As one of the largest net beneficiaries of EU taxpayer funds in the bloc’s systemic wealth transfer scheme, perhaps French and German taxpayers should just write personal checks directly to Washington to pay back those loans? And who would dare to criticize the Poles for wanting to arm up to the max against the perennial “Russian threat"?

Trump is already talking like he wants to just drop the big song and dance over war and Russia in favor of just straight up demanding that NATO allies buy more American weapons. That risks hindering the EU’s plans to use perpetual conflict with Russia as an excuse to finally start making big military industrial profits of their own at European taxpayer expense.

On trade, Trump has said that he’d go all-out with tariffs on imports, even against allies. The EU, which became over reliant on pricier American energy in the wake of divorce from its top supplier, Russia, is in no position to retaliate now that it’s gone all-in with Washington and compromised any strategic autonomy that it may have had. And it’s even worse news for Britain, seeking a post-Brexit trade deal with the US. Good luck with that now that Trump has called out the UK governing party’s meddling.

A trade war with the US under Trump would represent the biggest threat to the survival of the current Western establishment, from the UK and EU to Canada, if only because it would underscore the fact that its elites were systemically negligent in failing to secure the interests of their own nations and citizens through trade diversification away from the US.

An “America First” Trump isn’t a threat to foreign citizens. He’s potentially their biggest ally in trying to get it through the thick, brainwashed skulls of US-allied Western elites that much of what they do serves a foreign agenda made in the USA that actually does their nations and citizens a huge disservice.

But if Harris wins, they’ll probably just hit the snooze button and keep sleepwalking to Washington’s tune – right off an eventual cliff.