Paris, March 18: We’ve long had your back, now it’s our turn. That is how the famously transactional US President Donald Trump is framing his demands that allies help him with the Iran war. He wants to call in IOUs for decades of US security guarantees.
The string of refusals indicates his stock of European goodwill is low. He has put allies through the wringer since returning to the White House, bullying them over tariffs, Greenland and other issues, and disparaging the sacrifices their soldiers made alongside US troops in Afghanistan.
Now he’s demanding — not just requesting — that they send warships to help the US unblock the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes — essentially mop up behind the conflagration that he and Israel ignited in the Middle East.
The reply has been a “global raspberry.”
That’s how a veteran French defense analyst, François Heisbourg, described allied responses.
No close ally has come forward with immediate help. Britain is flat-out refusing to be drawn into the war. France says the fighting would have to die down first. Others are non-committal. China, which is not an ally but was also asked to help, is ignoring Trump’s call.
“This is not Europe’s war. We didn’t start the war. We were not consulted,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Tuesday.
Trump’s frustration with the Rolls-Royce of allies’
Trump has singled out the refusal from the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Keir Starmer cultivated ties with Trump and reached an early trade deal with the administration, but is now among allies who refuse to join a regional war with no clear endgame.
The UK “was sort of considered the Rolls-Royce of allies,” Trump said Monday, adding that he’d asked for British minesweeping ships.
“I was not happy with the UK,” Trump said. “They should be involved enthusiastically. We’ve been protecting these countries for years.”
Starmer said Britain “will not be drawn into the wider war” and that British troops require the backing of international law and “a proper thought-through plan” — suggesting those were not in place.
He initially refused to let US bombers attack Iran from British bases before accepting their use for strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Retired Lt Gen Ben Hodges, former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, said allies are “looking at the United States in a way that they never have before. And this is bad for the United States.”
Having previously appeased Trump, some European leaders are “starting to realize that there’s no benefit or value in using flattery,” he said.
European leaders say it’s not their war
Going to war without consulting allies was in keeping with Trump’s America-first outlook.
“My attitude is: We don’t need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world,” he said Monday.
But failing to get an international mandate, as the US did before intervening in the 1990 Gulf War, is boomeranging.
“It is not our war; we did not start it,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said. “We want diplomatic solutions and a swift end to the conflict. Sending more warships to the region will certainly not contribute to that.”
French President Emmanuel Macron envisions possible naval escorts in the Strait of Hormuz — but only once fighting has died down.
“France didn’t choose this war. We’re not taking part,” he said.
After bruising tariff battles with Trump last year, the first months of 2026 have further strained alliances. Trump’s renewed pressure for US control of Greenland, including a tariff threat against eight European nations, and his false assertion that allied troops avoided front-line fighting in the Afghanistan War, upset partners in the NATO military alliance.
“Allies, or at least the Europeans, aren’t willing to be at the beck and call of a demand from Donald Trump,” said Sylvie Bermann, a French former ambassador to China, the UK and Russia.
“And even in asking for a helping hand, he is doing so in a brutal manner, saying: You’re useless, we’re the strongest, we don’t need you, but come,’” she said. (AP)
