By any measure, the Atlantic bedrock is breaking apart. The old certainties of US–European partnership – collective security, economic openness, shared liberal values – are falling away under the strain of American instability and extremism.
We are not witnessing a drift in the transatlantic alliance but its collapse. This poses acute dangers for Ireland.
The signs are unmistakable. The United States is consumed by culture wars, democratic decay and an ascendant populist nationalism that regards alliances as transactions, and multilateralism as weakness.
Meanwhile, Europe still clings to the illusion that it can muddle through – half-dependent on Washington’s security guarantee, half-committed to “strategic autonomy”. For small states like Ireland, this European drift is dangerous. It leaves us riding two horses that are now galloping in different directions.
For 75 years, American power underwrote European peace and prosperity. Nato was a key instrument of that bargain: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” as Lord Ismay famously quipped.
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