Geopolitics leaves little room for sentiment. The blunt truth for US allies in Europe and Asia is that it is better to have the global hegemon on your side than not.
Still common sense in Japan, this is now contentious in Europe.
The Trump administration demands ever-more from its allies and puts ever-greater burdens on them. Eventually, tempers snap.
Last week’s fireworks involved the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, once seen as Donald Trump’s closest friend in Europe. She was the only European leader to attend his second inauguration. The English-language version of her autobiography has a foreword by Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son. And vice-president JD Vance wrote the foreword for her second book.
But when the US president claimed that she had “begged him” for a joint photo at the G7 summit in France, Meloni hit back, saying that Trump’s account of their meeting was “totally invented”. “I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies,” she said in a video.
