Subject: Time For Dems to Step Up
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the following late last week:
The greatest threat to the transatlantic community is the ongoing, internal disintegration of the NATO alliance rather than external enemies.
He isn’t engaging in hyperbole. He’s issuing a warning and a verdict.
The cause of that disintegration has a name: Donald Trump.
The United States withdrew 5,000 troops from Germany — not as part of a grand strategy, not as part of a coordinated alliance posture — but as an act of pique in response to criticism from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who dared to question the competence of American war planning in Iran. Here is what Merz said last month:
The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result.
An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible.
This isn’t statecraft. This is petulance dressed up as policy.
The result? Shock across Europe. Alarm inside NATO. Open concern — even among Republicans — that the move weakens deterrence and emboldens adversaries.
Perhaps most telling of all is that allies are beginning to ask whether the United States can still be trusted.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening.
Since 1945, the United States has been the organizing power of the democratic world. NATO was not simply a military alliance. It was the backbone of global stability.
Today, that backbone is cracking.
European leaders now openly say they must go it alone.
NATO itself is scrambling to understand the details of unilateral American decisions.
The alliance is strained, not by external enemies, but by internal fracture.
That’s what decline looks like.
And let’s talk about weakness — real weakness, not the chest-thumping nonsense of MAGA rallies.
The war with Iran has stretched American resources, limiting strategic flexibility and depleting key systems.
Troops are withdrawn from critical theaters, not based on doctrine, but on personal grievance.
Countries are refusing base access. Others are hedging. Some are preparing for a world where America is no longer reliable.
This isn’t strength. This is retreat disguised as bravado.
Then there is the debt.
The United States is now carrying historic levels of debt, while simultaneously weakening the very alliance system that underwrites its global economic leadership. The architecture that sustained American power — alliances, trade relationships, forward deployments — is being dismantled in real time.
A great power can survive debt.
It can’t survive isolation.
Yet here we are — more isolated than at any moment since the end of World War II.
This is the political opening of a generation. If Democrats fail to seize it, it will be an act of historic malpractice.
There’s a roadmap for this moment.
It comes from John F. Kennedy.
In 1960, Kennedy understood something fundamental: that elections are not just contests of policy, but contests of strength. He attacked the Eisenhower administration for a so-called “missile gap” — not because the numbers were the whole story, but because the perception of weakness was politically decisive.
He seized the mantle of strength.
He made national security the central argument.
He defined his opponent as complacent, outdated, and dangerously unserious.
Democrats must do the same now.
They must say, clearly and relentlessly:
MAGA isn’t strong. It’s weak.
It isn’t patriotic. It’s reckless.
It isn’t strategic. It’s impulsive.
They must hammer this truth: Donald Trump is the most pro-isolationist, alliance-destroying, strategically incoherent commander-in-chief in modern American history.
They must say:
Donald Trump weakens NATO.
Donald Trump alienates allies.
Donald Trump empowers adversaries.
Donald Trump confuses ego with national interest.
They must never stop saying it because this is the great inversion of our time.
The Republican Party — the party of Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan — has become the party of retreat.
The Democratic Party now has the opportunity — in fact, the obligation — to become the party of American strength.
Serious about alliances.
Serious about deterrence.
Serious about global leadership.
The world is watching.
In Warsaw.
In Berlin.
In Kyiv.
In Taipei.
They’re asking a simple question: is America still America?
Donald Tusk has already given his answer. “NATO is disintegrating.”
History will record whether the American people accepted that verdict, or rose to reject it.
The choice is coming.
It couldn’t be more stark
Stephen Schmidt
Are Dems up to the challenge?
They’d better be.
Sometimes the situation creates the needed leadership.
This may be one of those times