Daalder, speaking to CNBC-TV18, says a “highly impulsive” Trump will hold nothing back — even willing to accept strategic setbacks with allies like India — as long as he’s at the helm of an America that strikes a favourable trade deal with China.
Another of Trump’s bugbears is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). During his first time and five weeks into his second, Trump has repeatedly claimed Europe must step up and pour more funds into NATO, rather than using the United States as an ATM.
Even if the US were to withdraw from the alliance, NATO would endure, says Daalder, who served as the United States’ permanent NATO representative during Barack Obama’s second presidential term (2009-13).
Edited Excerpt from the Interview:
Q: What are your expectations from Donald Trump’s second presidency?
Daalder: Trump 2.0 is not only more demanding, it has no natural points of friction, or guardrails, or ways to control the impulses of a highly impulsive man — Donald Trump. Trump 1.0 was defined by who we call the adults in the room — the people had years of experience dealing with the government, with the world, and they were able, together with people in the White House, to deal with Trump and try to tamp down his worst excesses.
Now we have an administration with no guardrails, in which the Secretary of Defence (former Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth) owes his position to Trump and will do whatever the president tells him to do. That’s true for the Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) and everyone else. So, it’s now the impulse of the President that will drive things. Part of that will lead to unpredictability. A person that I met here in India said that with Trump, the only certainty is uncertainty.
But the other thing it means is that his worldview, which is actually quite defined, will now dictate how he deals with the world — he doesn’t like allies, believes that we should work with big powers like Russia and China, and wants to get the best possible deal out of any relationship. It’s highly transactional. Win-lose — no leading, just winning.
Q: I’d like to ask about the USA’s relationship with NATO and Europe. Considering the speeches that members of the administration, like Vice President JD Vance, have made, do you think there will be a rupture there?
Daalder: The fundamental point is that the Europeans think there is a rupture. We are seeing a fundamental shift in European thinking, perhaps best exemplified by what happened in Germany, where, of course, the attack on the German system happened by the vice president in Munich.
The German reaction to this was one of outrage, on the one hand, and a realisation that something fundamental had broken. So, Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Mertz, took the first opportunity to publicly declare that the United States was no longer a reliable ally and that they need an independent Europe, even if it means working outside of NATO. Since 1949, German chancellors have relied on the United States for its security and sense of self-worth. So, for a German chancellor to say that is extraordinary. But then, we live in extraordinary times.
Q: What about NATO? You have been the US ambassador to NATO. Will NATO’s guarantees for its European partners last? And can partners and allies count on those guarantees?
Daalder: The question, of course, is, can they count on the US guarantee? And the US guarantee is a promise. It’s a promissory note. You said if something happens, I will do this. We are now in an age where those promissory notes can be ripped up any day, in which the United States, in an extraordinary measure, votes with Russia, North Korea, and Belarus, the three countries that are involved in a war against Ukraine, against not only Ukraine but every single ally that the United States has.
Even China and Iran abstained from that resolution. And under those circumstances, trusting the United States will be more and more difficult. The impulse will be to say we must figure out how to be more independent and invest more in our own defence. But in the end, an alliance that has existed for 75 years may not even get to its 76th birthday in its present form.
And here’s the important thing, NATO will persist even if the United States withdraws, 31 countries will be members of NATO. They will use NATO instruments, they will use NATO procedures, they will use NATO rules to continue to find ways to ensure their collective defence.
Watch the accompanying video for the entire conversation.
