LONDON — After two years of rocky relations with President Donald Trump, America’s allies had reason to revel in the midterm rebuke of a commander in chief who targeted them with tariffs, threatened to seize their territories and often seemed more enamored with his autocratic peers in Moscow and Pyongyang.
Instead, the drubbing of Trump and Republicans in congressional races has drawn a muted response from U.S. allies, many of whom see the election as the latest political spasm in a country that, no matter how mighty, can no longer be trusted as a reliable defender of global democracy, Western officials and experts said.
In recent days, officials in Canada, Europe and Asia voiced relief that U.S. democratic mechanisms were not derailed and, in interviews and social media posts, they expressed cautious optimism that Trump’s penchant for attacks and threats might be curbed.
Yet many described the election result as offering limited comfort, as voters turned against a combative president but not his America First agenda — a nation turning further inward, officials said, with scant regard for the fate of allies and partners or any discernible longing to resume its former role as leader and defender of the free world.
“We are reassured by the strength of democracy,” said a senior Canadian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to express candid views about U.S. political developments. “But we will not contemplate a shift in our own course. Folks here don’t believe the old ways are ever coming back and are conducting themselves accordingly.”
While Trump has been the main driver of ruptures in the transatlantic alliance, he is accelerating a decoupling that Americans broadly favor, Gérard Araud, who served as French ambassador to the United States during Trump’s first term in office, said in a social media post.
“Americans are leaving a Europe they see more and more as a periphery of the world,” Araud said.
Disengagement is now the default across the U.S. political spectrum, he said, “the Democrats politely but inexorably and Trump brutally. They both close the door behind them but he slams it on our fingers.”
Surveys of voters appeared to substantiate these interpretations, showing that their decisions were driven overwhelmingly by concerns about the economy and other domestic issues.
The war in Iran was a singular exception, registering as a “top national issue” for one-third of the more than 90,000 midterm voters surveyed this week by the research firm NORC in partnership with The Washington Post.
But even that conflict was viewed mostly through the prism of domestic politics, with voters aggrieved to be paying higher fuel prices with little regard for ripple effects on allies, such as the soaring energy prices in Europe and months of deadly, damaging missile strikes on partner nations throughout the Middle East.
The Post-election surveys provided no indication that voters were troubled by Trump’s brutal treatment of long-standing allies, including his threats to seize Greenland, a territory of Denmark, a NATO member, or his vow to turn Canada into America’s 51st state.
The muted response from America’s closest partners stood in contrast to Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, which many world leaders heralded as a triumphal return for the transatlantic order after a four-year fever dream.
“The European Union and the United States are friends and allies, our citizens share the deepest of links,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union’s top official, said in a greeting to then-president elect Joe Biden. “Our renewed partnership,” von der Leyen said, “will be of particular importance.”
Trump’s return to the White House four years later shattered such illusions, officials said, making it clear that the U.S. retreat from its global leadership role was more deeply rooted, and that it was futile to hope for a renewed partnership after Trump.
As a result, even members of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership — an exclusive security alliance that includes the United States, Canada and Britain — have spent the past two years hedging against U.S. volatility.
In the face of double-digit tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, they have explored deeper trade ties with China, India and other rising powers.
Having seen the Trump administration suspend military shipments and intelligence support to Ukraine, Germany, Japan, South Korea and other allies are reinvesting in their militaries and searching for ways to reduce their reliance on the United States.
This global reconfiguring arguably erodes U.S. power and influence, experts said, but America’s political uncertainty leaves allies little choice.
“It would be a mistake” for world leaders to interpret the midterms as a sign that “the America we know and love is coming back,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term in office.
“If you are the German chancellor or the Japanese prime minister asking whether you can count on the United States, the answer has to be: ‘I hope so but I don’t know,’” Kupchan said. “That is not going to go away anytime soon.”
Trump now faces two years as a lame-duck president hemmed in by Democratic control of Congress. The shift in power could put pressure on the administration to work more closely with allies on key areas of foreign policy, including enforcing sanctions on Russia and maintaining military support to Ukraine.
But “Trump’s lame-duck status cuts both ways,” said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow on American statecraft at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Congress will harass him, and Republicans might start to desert him. But Trump may also grow even more obsessed with establishing his legacy as a great world statesman, as he sees it.”
If so, presidents have extraordinary powers that are difficult, if not impossible, for the legislative branch to contain.
In recent weeks, Trump effectively scrapped a package of Russia sanctions sponsored by Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina and a Trump confidant who died in July. Trump also called for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to step down while cutting a deal to buy Russian diesel.
Democrats denounced these moves. But even control of Congress will give them limited levers to block such unilateral actions by the president.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew G. Whitaker downplayed the significance of the midterm elections, declaring that “the foreign policy of the United States has not changed.”
For European security officials, that is precisely the worry.
“Estonia has every reason to expect continued strong, bipartisan support from Capitol Hill,” Jonatan Vseviov, a former Estonian diplomat who is now a candidate for prime minister, said on social media. “But the days of Europe relying on others to secure its future are over — and will not return.”
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