Editorial Board – Financial Times [unpaywalled]: “Winston Churchill is credited with saying that America does the right thing after exhausting the alternatives. Donald Trump has turned that aphorism on its head. In the past 10 days, he has all but incinerated 80 years of postwar American leadership. Those who thought America was a friend or ally, notably Ukraine and Nato, are dropping once safe assumptions to cope with a world in which America is an unabashed predator. Countries that were treated by Washington as adversaries, notably Vladimir Putin’s Russia, are suddenly America’s friend…

Some have projected on to Trump a clever chess move in which he is luring Russia away from its “no limits” partnership with China in a reverse of what Richard Nixon did in the cold war. But that is wishful thinking. Any such manoeuvre would make sense only in concert with America’s allies. While promising to lift sanctions on Russia, Trump is readying for a new transatlantic trade war. After three generations of US leadership, it is always tempting to believe that Trump does not mean what he says. Perhaps this is a feint in some grand art of the deal. But allies and erstwhile friends must banish those self-soothing thoughts. With Trump, what you see is what you get. America has turned.