The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Italy Gives Trump the Cold Shoulder || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Trump's chaotic and isolated approach to the Iran War has caused rifts between the U.S. and many of its closest European allies. Topping that list is the Italians. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4cH3gLa

Hey all, Peter Zine here. Coming to you from Prosser, Washington, where I'm at the Daven-Lore winery, one of my all-time faves. Today, we are going to talk about the end of the American alliance with Europe, specifically the Italians. Now, there are a lot of things going on in alliance politics right now that are really, really bad. At the top of the list, of course, is Donald Trump saying that all of the allies are, quote, useless and powerless short version is that normally, when you carry out a military operation, the United States. You consult with the allies

and get as many countries on board as possible so that even if they're not providing troops, they can provide logistical support. This may be a surprise, but the United States is in the Western Hemisphere and most of its military operations are in the Eastern Hemisphere. And while the U.S. does have a fully blue-water navy,

that doesn't mean you can just sail a random ship into a random location and prosecute a conflict. There's a logistical chain for fuel and people and medical and weapons that goes all the way back to the mainland. And if some of those steps can be carried by allies, then the operation is more effective, it's more durable, it's cheaper, it's more likely to be successful. And so in every war the United States has ever been, going back to formation, whenever we've operated beyond our

shores, we've always done it hand and glove with some allies. Until this one. This is the first war in American history where the normal logistical chain was completely ignored. And so, even countries like the United Kingdom who have done everything with us hand in glove since World War II weren't even consulted. And so a month into the Iran War, when things started to look really sketchy from a security point of view and a shipping point of view, Donald Trump started to make public appeals, not private, not through the ambassadors, not DeMarshes, not to their equivalent of our State Department, not to their foreign ministries, just publicly screaming at them for not doing more, even though not a single one of them was consulted on any aspect of the operation.

And that's brought us to the point where the Trump administration says it's publicly considering removing itself from NATO because the allies have been useless. Problem number one. Problem number two, we're not going to share the images because I'm not into that. But Donald Trump has posted a number of heretical blasphemous things, basically claiming to be Jesus. or a friend of Jesus. God, how many, how many affairs you have to have before that really doesn't resonate with people? Anyway, truly awful, awful graphics that he has shared with the world about how he's basically the second coming.

Heretical, blasphemous, and in the United States, he has also become somewhat infamous for basically dumping on the Pope. in quite egregious manners. Now, American Catholics and American evangelicals and American Christians in general have to come to terms without on their own, whether or it affects their politics or their decisions about whether or not Donald Trump is a horrible, horrible human being or not. That's their business.

But abroad, in certain places, those statements, those images are really resonating and nowhere more than in Italy, where Georgia Miloni, the prime minister, has been a few, fan of Trump, an ally of Trump in every way that matters. She's on the right herself. But when you start shitting on the Pope and pretending Jesus, it changes things. And so Italy has gone from and being in somewhat lockstep with Donald Trump's foreign policies to in just the last couple of weeks, has basically broken away from the United States, gone dead silence on things like Iran, has stopped shipping weapons or providing logistical support to Israel, and

And for all intents and purposes, the alliance is now over. For the United States, this is going to be a big problem. Because we now have a number of European states, because they weren't consulted, they didn't agree with the war, it's hurting their economies. And the moral questions of what Donald Trump is are in such question that they are not allowing their equipment and their their bases to participate in American logistics and military support. So we now have Italy and Spain and France and the United Kingdom that are giving the United States a cold shoulder in any number of ways. And that just leaves Germany. And if Germany goes, that is the entirety of the American ability to project power to the Middle East.

So in the last two weeks, independent of the war, what Trump has done is shattered the moral fabric of the alliance. It is difficult to underline how bad this is, because while the United States does have a fully blue water navy, that doesn't mean that each individual ship can operate from the homeland and operating the eastern hemisphere. Just the sailing time alone would be a problem. But when you talk about ships that are supporting, say, the super carriers, the super carriers are nuclear powered. They don't have to stop to refuel, but they have to replenish, and all of their carrier rings are not necessarily nuclear powered, and they need fuel. So we've actually seen in just the last two weeks a collapse in the United States' ability to function outside of home waters. And that is something that will resonate in American and global strategic thinking for decades to come.