I'm Christopher Leiden, and this is open source, looking for our American place in what can feel like a new world order.

Steve Walt, you are our first and favorite so-called realist in the foreign policy game.

Realists being the people who steer by the interests of nations, not their egos or their dreams.

And they look beyond the headlines to the long-term

effects of policy to the results. By your standards, it looks like a new world since that

astonishing shouting match in the White House, Donald Trump telling Ukraine's President Zelensky

that the U.S. is out of the war on the border of Russia, that we're bent on repairing our relationship

with Vladimir Putin. And you're in the news, Steve Walt, with a commentary and a headline that

says, yes, America is Europe's enemy now. Sounds edgy, almost alarming to me. What is the American threat to Europe, Steve Walt?

Well, I think the American threat to Europe is an attempt to fundamentally alter a lot of the

values and institutions that have been operating in Europe now for 50, 60, 70 plus years.

It's not just a case of the United States saying, look, it's been a great

relationship, but we need to redefine it. We need a different division of labor with Europe. We

need Europe to take responsibility for its own security while we focus on other problems. But we want

to do that in a relatively collaborative way, maintain the economic relationship,

and remain consistent with a set of liberal values, you know, working with NATO but in a different

role, working with the European Union. That would be one way. You could maybe call it an

amicable divorce or just redefining the terms of the relationship.

But I think what the Trump administration is doing is much more fundamental than that.

And one way to think of it is trying to magify Europe.

Donald Trump is very comfortable with authoritarian rulers, with illiberal Democrats like

Victor Orban in Hungary.

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