Thread by @terjehelland

🇺🇸🇪🇺🌎The transatlantic alliance faces an uncomfortable truth: the instability in U.S. politics isn't just about Trump. It’s about the deeper flaws in American democracy itself—flaws that make the U.S. an unreliable pillar of Western security.
🧵A security thread.
1/10

Trump—a convicted fraudster, rapist, and insurrectionist—isn’t an outlier. The fact that he can win power again is a symptom of systemic weakness.
In any functioning democracy, such a figure would be politically extinct.
In the U.S., he was the GOPs first choice.
2/10

How did we get here? Its complicated but two core flaws make American democracy structurally unstable:
1️⃣ Money in politics—Citizens United allows billionaires to buy elections.
2️⃣ Electoral system design—A few swing states decide everything, making it easy to manipulate outcomes

Unlike in Europe (at least my country), where politicians resign over minor infractions, the U.S. system enables criminals to return to power.
When legal accountability means nothing, when money outweighs votes, when courts are stacked—how democratic is the U.S., really?
4/11

This isn’t just about domestic politics. If the U.S. can’t guarantee stable governance, how can Europe, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, or Japan trust it with their security?
5/11

NATO’s backbone has always been U.S. leadership. But when that leadership can swing between Biden’s internationalism and Trump’s isolationism—on a whim—the alliance itself is on borrowed time.
6/11

Europe must wake up. The old assumption—that the U.S. will always be there as a security guarantor—is dead.
A country that can be hijacked by extremists every four years is no foundation for defense and security.
7/11

The solution? The West must build an independent security framework.
✅ Europe must expand its defense capacity.
✅ Canada, Australia, Taiwan and Japan must coordinate more closely.
✅ NATO must prepare for a world where U.S. support is conditional—or absent.
8/11

This is not an anti-American argument. It’s about recognizing reality. The U.S. remains a vital partner, but the era of blind dependence is over.
The West needs a backup plan—before it’s too late.
9/11

The biggest threat to the Western alliance isn’t just Russia or China.
It’s the fragility of U.S. democracy itself.
If we don’t prepare for a post-American security order now, we may not get a second chance.
10/11

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