Tom Nichols: “When Donald Trump looks at a map, he doesn’t see nations. He sees property. All of those pretty colors do not represent actual places filled with human beings who have distinct cultures, languages, and histories; the planet, to Trump, is a big board game, like Risk or Monopoly. Greenland isn’t a real location—it’s a valuable chunk of territory nestled between Boardwalk and Park Place. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t an international waterway—it’s a thing to control somewhere between Kamchatka and East Africa.”

“This inability to grasp the existence of independent nations drives the president to fury when countries and their governments refuse to play along with his delusions.”

“Trump administration officials have made a flurry of visits to Moscow over the last month, with Europe on edge over a spate of hybrid attacks attributed to Russia,” the Washington Sun reports.

“But America’s European allies aren’t taking the visits as reassurance. Rather, security experts say they see it as another sign of the deep strain plaguing the NATO alliance.”

“American action is now less predictable, and its leaders are less communicative and less reliably committed to the NATO structure that has governed European security for 75 years, the experts said. Even if President Donald Trump doesn’t ultimately fulfill his threats to leave the alliance, the experts in the region said NATO needs to prepare to go it alone.”