Niall Ferguson

They might really do that.

We really need to get serious.

Now, I don't think that President Trump will one day announce, I'm done with NATO, or for that matter, go to war with Denmark.

This is all classic Trump bluff.

The goal is to force the Europeans to take seriously their own rhetoric.

Scott, for the last 10 years, I've heard European leaders here and elsewhere talk about strategic autonomy and how important it is that Europe should become a real superpower.

But it was all talk.

Macron was especially good at giving these speeches.

But did the French defense spending meaningfully rise?

No.

So I think part of what we're seeing here is a deliberate and conscious effort to provoke the Europeans into getting real about defense spending and rearmament and really taking ownership of the crisis in Eastern Europe that began when Russia invaded or fully invaded Ukraine.

So I'm not so sure that the goal here is to dismantle the alliances any more than it is to dismantle the alliances that the U.S.

has in Asia with Japan or with South Korea.

Those countries, of course, didn't like having tariffs imposed on them, and it made them very nervous.

But it's not like the US is about to tear up its defense alliances in Asia, especially when China poses an obvious threat to those countries.

The truth is that America's allies don't have a better option.

Mark Carney may think that he can go to China and make nice with Xi Jinping, and this will somehow impress Donald Trump.

But I don't think it does because is Canada really going to join the Chinese greater East Asian co-prosperity zone?

What would that actually imply?

Would it really be in Canada's interest to have Chinese Communist Party surveillance of their tech stack?