President Donald Trump’s interactions with America’s allies since launching an unprompted war against Iran have been nothing but bullying, cajoling and finally whining about those same allies’ lack of subservience. Iranian attacks on boats traveling within the Strait of Hormuz have prompted the president to ask for aid that will not come while the U.S.-Israeli assaults continue. Instead, European leaders have tried to deter Trump from his destructive path, only to receive nothing but vitriol and spite in return.
There’s something unsettlingly familiar then in watching Trump and his cronies willingly confuse allies’ declarations of boundaries with simple selfishness
With little warning from the U.S. ahead of the attack, and no clear strategy for how this campaign ends, Europe has kept America at arm’s length during these past few weeks. Spain has been the most strident opponent, closing its airspace to American aircraft involved in the war. Italy reportedly refused to let U.S. warplanes land at a base in Sicily. The United Kingdom has turned down requests to take part in any mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz during active hostilities. Even Poland has refused to transfer Patriot air defense batteries to the Gulf, a snub that would have been unthinkable in the past.
The backlash from the Trump administration has been as swift as it is petulant, with the president lashing out in multiple Truth Social posts. His Cabinet fawningly followed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mocked the refusal of the “big bad Royal Navy” to join the operation in his press conference Tuesday morning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the country’s chief diplomat, was similarly disparaging in a Monday interview with Al Jazeera:
We have countries like Spain, a NATO member, that we are pledged to defend, denying us the use of their airspace and bragging about it. Denying us the use of their bases. And there are other countries that have done that as well. And so you ask yourself, ‘Well, what is in it for the United States?’”
Rubio knows full well that NATO is a defensive alliance, under which members come to each other’s aid in the aftermath of an attack. In its 76-year existence, NATO has only invoked Article V of its Charter once — in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. Rather than make that point to his boss, Rubio opted for the path of least resistance and feigning ignorance of his own portfolio.
At some level, international relations and diplomacy are high-level extensions of human interactions and relationships. There’s something unsettlingly familiar then in watching Trump and his cronies willingly confuse allies’ declarations of boundaries with simple selfishness. For this White House, being told no is cause for attack, not self-reflection. Likewise, even the merest doubt of the most ill-founded idea is somehow painted as being toxic behavior.
Accordingly, self-victimization is the name of the game under Trump. The spin from the administration about America finishing a war that Iran started 40 years ago has all the hallmarks of a deeply unwell individual projecting their own flaws and pain onto everyone around them. All that’s missing is a crying phone call, asking “Why do you hate me? I was just standing up for myself.” Nothing about Trump suggests he knows how friends or friendship work. Other countries’ refusals to help aren’t the actions of enemies. They are the behaviors of friends — real friends, who know better than to enable your worst instincts and habits. It’s your friends who will sit you down and explain to you why they’re worried about you. It’s your friends who will tell you when you’re in the wrong, no matter how much you might feel otherwise. It’s a hard thing, caring about someone enough to tell them something they don’t want to hear, to want to push them to be better in the long run, even if it hurts in the short term. But nothing about Trump suggests he knows how friends or friendship work. I know objectively that he has people with whom he’s surrounded himself for years. But confusing a retinue of hangers-on for a group of true friends is a time-honored tradition for people in Trump’s social strata. As president, the disconnect between the two has bled into Trump’s foreign policy, leading him to treat allies as vassals and interpret any denials of his wants as unwarranted aggression against him. Much like friendships, international alliances are meant to be a two-way relationship based on mutual interests and shared goals. They don’t work when one party’s needs are placed above all others. It’s unsustainable at best, deeply harmful in the long-term, and can lead to rifts that may take years to heal.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
