How the world changed in a month

President Donald Trump spent the first month of his second term on an extraordinary mission — dismantling the global system the United States spent the past 80 years building.

It was always theoretically possible that the West could lose its resonance as World War II and the Cold War became increasingly distant memories. But no one expected to see a US president wielding the ax.

When Trump won last year’s election, there was a sense among some western diplomats in Washington that their governments knew how to handle a president who in his first term often made foreign policy by tweet. But the shock that drove European leaders to an emergency meeting in Paris this week suggests they underestimated just how destructive Trump’s second term would be.

Trump has reversed US policy on the war in Ukraine, taking the side of the invader rather than the invaded party. He’s parroting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points and is trying to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from power.

His Vice President JD Vance traveled to Munich, where he castigated European leaders as “tyrants” suppressing conservative thought and pressured Germany to dismantle the political “firewall” that it set up to ensure that fascists could never again win power.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meanwhile told Europeans that they now need to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent” casting immediate doubt on security alliance NATO’s foundational creed of mutual self-defense.