The United States was losing interest in preserving European security, but at the same time it was hostile to European aspirations to take on the tas… - Robert Kagan

No one sitting in Germany in 1945 would have said, “Oh don’t worry, it’s just natural to become a democracy.”

When President Dwight Eisenhower undermined and humiliated Britain and France at Suez in 1956, it was only the most blatant of many American efforts to cut Europe down to size and reduce its already weakening global influence.

Nor is there sufficient reason to hope that the disordered and dysfunctional opposition to Trump today will suddenly become more unified and effective once Trump takes power. That is not how things work. In evolving dictatorships, the opposition is always weak and divided. That's what makes dictatorship possible in the first place. Opposition movements rarely get stronger and more unified under the pressures of persecution.