Western Europe is reeling in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s transactionalism, unilateralism, and unpredictability. U.S. allies on the continent have bristled at an American president unsentimental about decades-long alliances and uninterested in the storied history of transatlantic cooperation. In Berlin, Madrid, Paris, and other western European capitals, leaders are either struggling to manage the risk posed by an antagonistic leader in Washington or deferring any hard choices about how to adapt in the hope that a more friendly successor takes office in 2028.

Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand are also wary of Trump. But the United States’ Asian allies have been far less pessimistic than their European counterparts. They see risks, too, but they are also focused on realizing unique opportunities that are emerging from the disruption that Trump is causing. By accepting the Trump administration’s “America first” approach, the United States’ Asian allies believe they can obtain special benefits, such as stronger security guarantees and collaboration in sectors including artificial intelligence and critical minerals processing.

Asian allies’ willingness to work with Trump on his terms is rooted in a sense of vulnerability that European allies neither feel nor understand. U.S. allies in Asia must deal with a unique threat from China, which is an economic superpower that possesses Asia’s most formidable military and eyes a return to regional preeminence. The presence of the United States and the security that it can provide is the only check that these states have against Chinese dominance. They are willing to take unequal deals from Washington because they know that taking orders from Beijing is far worse. Countries in western Europe, by contrast, have been outwardly disdainful of American power and culture, unwilling to recognize that many of the changes in Washington are the product of shifting structural realities rather than the president’s whim. It no longer makes sense for the United States to allow western Europe’s outsize role in defining the rules and norms of the global order because rising powers such as China are exploiting these rules and norms at the United States’ expense.

The divergence in attitudes between Asia and Europe has shaped the two continents’ respective abilities to handle Trump and the world he has wrought. Major allies in western Europe—especially Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain—were caught flat-footed when the United States turned away from a selfless and benign internationalism. Washington’s Asian allies, in contrast, were ready. Asian governments are looking at the world as it is, whereas western European ones still see the world as it once was—or how they wish it were. In a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power, the willingness of U.S. allies in Asia to deal with Washington is likely to make them stronger and more secure than European powers will be.

TOO CLOSE TO COMFORT

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, western Europe has enjoyed a peace dividend. Countries in this region have acted as though they do not have any serious security or existential threats. Even after Russian President Vladimir Putin embarked on his westward expansion, beginning with the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, in 2014, major powers in western Europe were reluctant to invest in their own security. From 2014 to 2019, according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, defense spending as a share of GDP in the four largest military spenders in continental western Europe—Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—remained largely stagnant. Spending grew slowly after 2019; only after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine did these countries start to seriously address the need to build up their defenses.

Instead of investing in their militaries, western European countries have prioritized their vast welfare states. They spend more than many other countries on programs such as pensions, health care, unemployment benefits, and disability payments. In 2024, according to estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain spent 27.9 percent, 30.6 percent, 27.6 percent, and 25.9 percent of GDP, respectively, on public social spending. The average among members of the OECD, which includes 38 high- and middle-income countries committed to democracy and free markets, was 21.2 percent of GDP. If leading western European powers are to meet their defense commitments—Germany plans to spend 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense by 2029—they will need to reduce their social spending. But there is no clear evidence yet that they are planning to do so.

Western European countries have been able to prioritize welfare over security because they are insulated from direct threats. They are shielded by the territorial buffer of eastern Europe and by the institutional buffer of NATO, which obliges the world’s sole superpower, the United States, to defend their borders. Safe in its bubble, the region has come to see itself as the custodian of a civilized and stable post–World War II order.

Western European countries have prioritized welfare over security.

Despite the size of its economy, Europe is not a major security provider. It exports norms, standards, rules, and laws because of its central role in international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the United Nations and because the European Union represents one of the world’s largest markets in terms of GDP and purchasing power. There is even a term—“the Brussels effect”—to describe the power of European regulations to spread beyond the continent’s borders. When European officials and experts visit Asia, they emphasize that Europe is a normative and regulatory superpower rather than a military one.

Trump’s “America first” agenda is a direct attack on the postwar European project. Its proponents argue that the United States has wasted its hard-earned capital and resources pursuing idealistic liberal and cosmopolitan principles—or, as Trump puts it, it has been “ripped off” by its allies. In this view, the United States has become weaker, less resilient, and more socially divided because of a misplaced desire to almost single-handedly underwrite a system that benefits others more than the United States.

Europeans admit that global institutions are imperfect. But they reject “America first” and believe that these flawed institutions are all that is preventing the world from descending into disorder. In capitals across western Europe, an outsize role in these institutions is something to be proud of, not something to apologize for. European countries retain considerable influence and privileges in international institutions, especially as a coherent bloc. To remain relevant and live up to its values, western Europe needs to prevent serious splits within the EU and channel its collective influence through the very institutions that Trump is attacking.

THE SUPERPOWER NEXT DOOR

U.S. allies in Asia also support a rules-based order. After Trump’s reelection, in 2024, Japanese diplomats embraced former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific, a concept centered on a commitment to international law, free trade, and regional stability. The Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan have all explicitly endorsed this idea, as well.

But Washington’s Asian allies are far less secure than its European friends. Asia has been a hub of economic progress, but the region has no genuine multilateral security institutions. To maximize its leverage, the United States constructed a set of bilateral alliances with ambiguous security guarantees rather than build a collective security regime similar to NATO. Over the past decade, the United States and its regional allies have set up mechanisms for coordinating strategy and economic policy, including organizations such as the Quad, made up of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. But the Quad does not impose any security obligations on the United States or other members that could fully reassure U.S. allies.

The United States’ obligations in the region are also not clearly defined, which adds to uncertainty. Every new administration in Washington makes its own determination as to what might be covered under each specific bilateral alliance. Presidents have enormous flexibility to decide which scenarios warrant American protection and when allies ought to be left to fend for themselves.

The result is that American alliances in Asia are already much more transactional than their equivalents in Europe. Every time the United States elects a new president, Asian allies must demonstrate anew their value and loyalty to Washington. Without a collective security agreement that includes the United States, each Asian ally must try to maximize the security coverage it will receive under the deliberately ambiguous terms of its respective alliance—terms that the United States frequently changes. In 1969, for instance, U.S. President Richard Nixon’s Guam Doctrine instructed allies in Asia to assume primary responsibility for their own defense for any conventional attack, which was a retreat from a more comprehensive U.S. security umbrella. And today in Taiwan, Washington follows a policy of strategic ambiguity that is purposely unclear as to whether Washington would defend the island if China were to attack. Each successive Taiwanese leader must guess what strategic ambiguity means to the current White House. The relationships between Asian governments and Washington thus revolve around ceaseless negotiation rather than institutional obligation, generating anxiety about each new cabinet appointment and adviser in the national security realm.

Washington’s Asian allies are far less secure than its European friends.

Asian allies face an additional reality that is much more threatening to them than anything Europe must deal with: the rise of China. China accounts for around half of Asia’s entire economic output and spends more on defense each year than do all of the United States’ Asian allies combined. Russia remains a threat to Europe, but its clout pales in comparison to that of China. Russia’s economy is about one-tenth the size of that of western Europe, and its military spending is about one-third.

For Asian allies, the more powerful the United States is and the more prepared it is to use military force, the more credible American deterrence becomes and the more secure they feel. Trump’s war on Iran unnerved Asian countries, which rely on imported oil shipped through the Middle East. But they were equally disconcerted in 2013, when U.S. President Barack Obama proved unwilling to enforce his own declared redline after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to attack his opponents during a civil war, or when Obama did little to push back on Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea despite Xi’s personal assurances that he would not do so.

Because they have experienced China becoming increasingly coercive and dominant, Washington’s Asian allies accept that their stability must be underwritten by a powerful—and sometimes violent—United States. In their view, institutions, norms, and values that western Europe promotes are secondary to power. The question for Asia is whether it is American or Chinese power, and therefore American or Chinese norms and values, that are ascendant. Such a realistic perspective is more closely in accord with the “America first” ideas motivating the Trump administration. Europe opposes this perspective on cultural, political, and ideological grounds, but Asian countries can deal with Trump’s transactionalism based on narrower notions of America’s interests without reinventing their political values, changing their strategies, or fundamentally reshaping their worldviews.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

Asian and European allies are responding differently to Washington’s new approach. Western European countries have been attempting to “de-Americanize”: they have made plans to insulate their economies from U.S. trade regulations and to decrease reliance on U.S. technologies in sectors such as artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and space. In June, and in defiance of U.S. criticism, the EU proposed two new policies—the Cloud and AI Development Act and the Chips Act 2.0—to reduce reliance on American tech companies by pushing governments to promote European providers over U.S. alternatives. When they have to deal with Washington, U.S. allies in western Europe are desperate to operate as a coherent European unit. A unified and common EU market offers its members much more leverage when dealing with the United States than individual Asian allies enjoy.

Among U.S. allies in Asia, by contrast, there is little talk about pushing away from the United States or presenting a collective front. Nearly every Asian state took a transactional approach to dealing with Trump in response to the so-called Liberation Day tariffs that he announced in April 2025. Although both Asian and European leaders vociferously argued that the tariffs violated existing trading rules and agreements and were unfair and counterproductive, Asian leaders immediately began bilateral negotiations with the Trump administration. They could not spend time lamenting the end of the old trading system and instead set to work to ink deals that would give them lower rates in the new one.

Japan, the most powerful and influential U.S. ally in Asia, signed a trade deal with Trump in July 2025 that included an agreement to invest $550 billion to rebuild and expand U.S. industries in sectors such as fossil fuels, semiconductors, critical minerals processing and refining, and pharmaceuticals. As an additional act of deference to Trump, Tokyo explicitly linked such investment with the revitalization of the U.S. defense industrial base.

South Korea followed a similar approach. The Trump administration placed a 25 percent levy on South Korea, which violated the bilateral free trade agreement in place since 2012. But Seoul did not threaten retaliation, much less impose its own countermeasures. Instead, it dispatched senior officials to Washington to reach a deal with Trump—a necessary diplomatic overture to maintain the U.S. troop presence in and security commitments to South Korea. Seoul ultimately announced a $350 billion investment fund for U.S. owned companies and an additional $100 billion in oil and gas purchases from U.S. firms as part of a deal to reduce U.S. tariffs to 15 percent.

When Trump threatened Europe with tariffs, Brussels initially refused to negotiate with Trump on terms heavily favorable to the United States. The EU threatened Washington with countermeasures that would have imposed levies of up to $22 billion on U.S. imports in sectors such as manufacturing machinery and technology. But with an all-out trade war on the horizon, the United States and the EU did come to an agreement, in July 2025. Led by Germany, which, as an export-dependent economy, had much to lose from a trade war, Brussels agreed to eliminate all import duties on U.S. industrial goods and to improve market access for American agricultural exporters in return for a 15 percent ceiling on tariffs on most European goods headed for the United States. The EU also promised to invest $600 billion in the United States and to purchase $750 billion worth of American energy exports by 2028.

Although the results of the deal were similar to those reached in Asia, the difference in approach was stark. U.S. allies in Asia did not threaten countermeasures or legal repercussions for violations of existing trade deals or treaties. Many prominent voices in government and industry in Germany urged the EU to stand up to U.S. pressure despite the economic hit the country would take. Prominent German officials in Brussels, for instance, even urged the EU to use its anticoercion instrument to impose retaliatory measures on U.S. goods and services and potentially restrict access to the EU market. For many in Germany and other countries in western Europe, EU solidarity must be the guiding principle.

In contrast, and even before the Liberation Day tariffs were announced, the United States’ Asian allies were focused on striking a deal with Trump on terms that would disproportionately benefit America as a show of obeisance. For U.S. allies in Asia without strong institutional security guarantees, imbalanced agreements are the price of American protection. For many leaders in Asia, “America first” is tolerable as long as it does not mean “America alone.”

The difference between how countries in western Europe and those in Asia pursue greater resilience is likely to grow. Western Europe remains reluctant to work with the United States and is seeking to do whatever it can—primarily finding other partners to work with—to reduce its reliance on Washington in the long term. Asian allies remain convinced that getting more from the United States is the best and only way to keep their countries strong.

A NEW HIERARCHY

In January, European leaders cheered when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a rousing speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos calling for middle powers to band together against Trump’s United States. Their Asian counterparts quietly dismissed Carney’s vision, which many found naive and even dangerous. Heeding his call would mean pushing themselves away from the United States and leaving themselves isolated against Chinese ambition and power.

U.S. allies in Asia are already preparing themselves to work with whatever version of the United States they might have to deal with after Trump leaves the scene. They are getting ready for the likely possibility that the days of benign liberal internationalism are truly over. Leaders in Asia recognize that alliance systems are becoming explicitly hierarchical; the only question is whether it is the United States or China that is on top. If allies want to work with Washington, they know that the United States retains and will demand new exclusive rights and privileges—and that whoever is in the White House calls the shots, no matter how arbitrary or self-serving.

This new hierarchy encompasses both economics and security. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Trump signed a set of agreements relating to natural resources that disproportionately favor the United States. Japan will bear most of the more than $2 billion cost of exploring, extracting, and processing critical minerals and rare-earth minerals located deep in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Japanese firms such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui will invest in rare-earth mines in Arizona, Indiana, and North Carolina, and most of the processed material will be added to American stockpiles. For Japan, strengthening the alliance with the United States is the highest foreign policy priority, and these agreements are as much about that as they are about Japanese economic resilience.

Other regional allies are making similar moves. In January, Taiwan announced it will invest $250 billion in U.S.-based chip-making plants in return for Trump’s limiting general tariffs on Taiwanese exports to 15 percent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s leading chip manufacturer, bought 900 acres of land in Arizona, expanding its overall presence in the United States and further committing itself to producing chips in the United States. Despite some concern within Taiwan that offshoring its chip production could decrease Washington’s willingness to come to its defense in the event of a crisis, its political and corporate leaders have decided that producing some chips in Arizona is worth that risk.

In Asia, imbalanced agreements are the price of American protection.

The approach of U.S. allies in Asia is working so far. But it has its limits. These allies are all democracies on the periphery of an authoritarian regime in Beijing; a transactional approach based purely on material interests could undercut the values-based solidarity needed to stand up to China. Allies are willing to accept unequal or even unfair arrangements with Washington if it guarantees their security, but there is a risk that Washington’s transactional dealings with China could leave them in a worse position relative to China than before. In May, for example, Trump delayed arms sales to Taiwan, seemingly prioritizing negotiating leverage with Beijing over the military needs of the vulnerable island. Governments in the region do not have the authority or leverage to demand that the United States change course, which means they must trust the U.S. president not to abandon them.

Western Europe’s unwillingness to accept the new reality puts the region in an even worse bind. If they are going to rely less on Washington, European countries need to spend much more on their own security. But this requires cutting welfare spending, which governments are reluctant or unable to do. And if western Europe truly pursues a trade and technology agenda designed to separate itself from the United States, Washington is even more likely to draw down its commitments to NATO, which escalates pressure on every other country in the alliance to more rapidly prioritize defense spending and reduce social spending.

Transactionalism and power politics also challenge western Europe’s commitment to unity. Countries such as France and Germany are determined to prevent the EU from splitting, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as member states differ in the severity of the threats they face and in the extent to which they are willing to work with Washington. This is where regional divides become apparent: eastern European states, which fear being invaded and swallowed up by Russia, spend far more on defense than western European countries do. In 2025, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania spent 3.4, 3.6, and 3.1 percent of their GDP, respectively, on defense, much higher shares than in most western European states. Countries in the direct line of fire from Moscow may pursue closer economic and security arrangements with Washington rather than allow western Europe to encourage them to move further away.

The Trump era will pass when the next U.S. president is elected, in November 2028. But as the United States continues to lead technological innovation and expand its military, the power disparity between Washington and its allies is likely to increase. Allies in western Europe and Asia will grow even more vulnerable to changes in U.S. policy and more dependent on American power for protection. Even after Trump leaves the White House, the question for U.S. allies on both sides of the world will be how to make the most of an unequal relationship. The United States’ Pacific allies have adapted and positioned themselves advantageously in a changing world order. Its Atlantic ones must accept that Europe’s privileged position in the global order is fading and learn to be more comfortable playing by Washington’s new rules.