Kill Switch

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, March 20, 2025

 

On Monday the president displayed the latest sensitive document he managed to lift from the National Archives: the Declaration of Independence.

 

Well, an original copy, anyway. He “requested” it from the Archives to help spruce up the Oval Office’s decor and they shuttled it over, having learned from the last time they tangled with him that resistance is futile.

 

The words on the parchment are apparently much darker and more legible than they are in the famous version of the Declaration on display at the Archives. Presumably that’s due to Trump’s copy having been stored away from light, although I like to imagine that the archivists sent him a replica from the gift shop with assurances that it was the real deal.

 

The artifact is now mounted on the wall near his desk, ostensibly as a source of national pride. But given his pretensions to monarchy, it more resembles a trophy from a hunting expedition, the civic equivalent of a stuffed moose head.

 

Have a look at it while you can, as he’s surely taking it with him when (if?) he leaves office. Come 2029, it’ll be hanging over a gilded toilet at Mar-a-Lago, the world’s most impressive bathroom word art.

 

The news about it caught my attention because of a coincidence in timing. Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, by far the biggest news in American international affairs has been … a declaration of independence. It came from incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, a week or so after J.D. Vance antagonized European diplomats in Munich and a few days before he and Donald Trump tussled with Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.

 

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz announced after his party won Germany’s elections. “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program. But after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

 

That was shocking. It was impolitic, for one thing, because having the leader of Germany kiss off his country’s alliance with the United States in a televised address is just the sort of pretext Trump might plausibly seize on to justify ditching NATO. Granted, he’s going to abandon it eventually anyway—but when he does, it would be useful to NATO supporters here in the U.S. if he didn’t have a ready-made excuse to do so. Germany told us to get lost!

 

But the other reason Merz’s comments were shocking is that they were true. If anything, they were too kind. At best, the Trump White House is indifferent to the fate of Europe. At worst, it’s eager to see the biggest beneficiaries of the Pax Americana end up under Russia’s thumb. The chancellor was grappling with a reality that’s both simple and very, very hard: A country capable of reelecting Donald Trump is a country that cannot be depended on.

 

It’s time for Europe to hit the kill switch on America’s leadership of the west.

 

Untrustworthy.

 

Imagine the look on Zelensky’s face yesterday when Trump proposed letting the United States take ownership of Ukraine’s power plants, including its nuclear facilities.

 

It’s not crazy in principle. Ukraine wants to halt Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, making that a key condition of the initial ceasefire that the White House proposed. Nothing would scare Moscow away from targeting that infrastructure like knowing that it’s now effectively U.S. territory, possibly with American workers on the ground and in the line of fire.

 

It would be a powerful, if limited, security guarantee for a country that’s been desperate to secure such guarantees from Washington.

 

The problem is that Zelensky has no reason to trust that Trump won’t abuse his power over Ukrainian energy to harm Ukrainian interests. On the contrary.

 

It was only a few weeks ago that the president halted weapons shipments and intelligence-sharing to soften up Kyiv’s resistance to a peace deal (and to punish Zelensky for the Oval Office squabble, of course). Other pressure tactics that would handicap Ukraine’s military have reportedly been considered but not yet implemented. You can see the next move on the chessboard as easily as I can: If the White House ends up in charge of Ukrainian electricity and Zelensky refuses some draconian new demand made by the U.S. on Russia’s behalf, the lights will go out across Ukraine.

 

Don’t think Trump wouldn’t do it. Summarily pulling the plug has become his go-to move on policy.

 

The United States is now so unreliable an ally, in other words, that a nation at war might be better off holding onto its territory and letting it be bombed by Russia than trusting it to American stewardship. Moscow can only damage Ukrainian energy production; Washington, under Trump’s deal, would have a kill switch.

 

The phrase “kill switch” has been a hot topic in European security discussions lately, in fact, specifically with regard to the American-made F-35 fighter jet.

 

Sixteen U.S. allies, including Germany, have F-35s in service. Our former friends in Canada have an order outstanding for 88 of the planes, to the tune of $14.5 billion. It’s easier for NATO partners to coordinate when everyone is working off the same tech and it’s nice for Lockheed Martin and the U.S. economy to have that tech being made here. But after watching Trump sabotage Ukraine’s military earlier this month to serve Russia’s interests, those allies have understandably begun to wonder: Could America do the same with the F-35?

 

What if there’s a “kill switch” embedded in the software on which the aircraft runs that might render it suddenly inoperable, like a phone being “bricked” by a hacker, if the White House wishes it so?

 

This is no random conspiracy theory. Paranoia about it overseas has risen to the point that Lockheed Martin felt moved to address it on Tuesday, noting that the Pentagon insists there’s no way to remotely disable the F-35. But even if you believe that (and why would you?), nations that use the jet are still stuck relying on the United States for spare parts and software updates. If Europe were to end up at war with Moscow and the president gave the order to cut off those parts and updates—uh oh.

 

Again, don’t think Trump wouldn’t do it.

 

On Wednesday, a member of Denmark’s parliament expressed public regret for his part in convincing the Danish government to use the F-35. In light of the way the White House has bullied Canada and sought to strengthen Putin at Europe’s expense, he wrote, “I can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse (which we will even in that situation).” It’s not hard to imagine, is it?

 

“Therefore,” he concluded, reasonably enough, “buying American weapons is a security risk that we can not run.”

 

Is he wrong? Overlooked amid the hype over Trump’s indefensible decision to temporarily halt weapons and intelligence to Ukraine are numerous quiet ways in which the White House has realigned America’s policy with Moscow’s. The administration has halted offensive cyber operations against Russia, suspended cooperation in an international effort to prevent Russian sabotage, defunded agencies dedicated to counterprogramming Russian propaganda, withdrawn from a multinational task force investigating Russian war crimes, and—most despicably—defunded a program at Yale to track the whereabouts of kidnapped Ukrainian children inside Russia.

 

Why would Denmark want to rely on the F-35 to defend itself from Russia if the country that makes the F-35 is increasingly on Russia’s side? Why wouldn’t Canada want to have the European Union as its chief military partner when its current chief military partner keeps babbling about how it shouldn’t exist? What sort of lunatic would persist in letting this administration have a de facto kill switch over its national security?

 

Trump can’t be trusted. More importantly, Americans can’t either.

 

Unfit to lead.

 

If this bothers you, you might reassure yourself that 2028 is right around the corner.

 

The early polling is auspicious, too. A Fox News survey finds the president currently rocking a 61 percent disapproval rating among independents. The prospect of him defying a court ruling is about as popular as measles. And his Putinist treatment of Ukraine has ignited a sharp backlash among Democrats and independents, with the number who say the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help Kyiv up sharply in both groups. Americans might plausibly elect a pro-western anti-Russian Democrat in 2028.

 

They might even succeed in seeing him inaugurated after Trump inevitably attempts another coup.

 

But so what? From the standpoint of a European weighing whether to trust the United States, what does it matter that a traditional liberal might take power in four years?

 

The most damaging consequence of Trump’s chaotic government-by-whim is that it makes long-term planning impossible. Tariffs might be imposed, or they might not. Legal immigrants might have rights, or they might not. Court rulings might be followed, or they might not. Vaccines might be available, or they might not. The United States might maintain its alliances, or it might not.

 

If you’re a highly skilled immigrant, a foreign corporation, a research scientist, or a European head of state, why would you wager your income, your career, your family, or your national security on America when American policymaking has never been more arbitrary and increasingly left to the devices of an imperious, mercurial mental defective by a Congress that’s rancid with cowards?

 

“It’ll change in 2028,” you reply. Sure, it might. Or it might not.

 

That’s the point. The thesis of this newsletter is and has always been that Trump and Trumpism are symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself. The problem is that America is no longer a country divided evenly between right-wing and left-wing versions of classical liberalism. It’s a country divided between liberalism and postliberalism.

 

Until Trump, Europeans could trust that America would backstop the western liberal order regardless of whether the president was Republican or Democrat. When the White House changed hands, foreign policy would shift at the margins—but never so much that a U.S. alliance with Soviet communists or Russian fascists was in the cards. When the White House changes hands now, however, the entire paradigm of American government changes with it.

 

In 2029 the United States might reclaim the title it held for the past 80 years as leader of the free world, or it might not. There’s a universe in which Trump is still in office at that point, one way or another, and is busily compensating for the decline in F-35 sales to Europe by selling them to Russia instead.

 

I repeat again: Don’t think he wouldn’t do it. And if he does, given his affinity for Putin, the risk of him using a kill switch to disable those jets in a fit of pique would be minimal.

 

But even if he leaves office on schedule, European leaders will have no earthly reason to go back to treating America as a reliable ally. Ours is now a country with a split personality, half liberal and half authoritarian (a chimera, one might call it), and whether the liberal or authoritarian half gets to set policy amounts to a coin flip every four years. Friedrich Merz might plausibly find himself dealing with President Josh Shapiro—or President Tucker Carlson.

 

Europe’s fate can’t depend on a series of coin flips. An American house divided may stand for a while but it certainly can’t be relied upon. The essential lesson of last year’s election is not that the Orange Man is bad but that half the American public is now so civically debilitated that it can’t tell or doesn’t care that the Orange Man is bad. Who in their right mind would trust the future of the western liberal order to a country as depraved as that?

 

Earlier today, Peter Wehner published an essay on Trump’s obsession with revenge. This grabbed me:

 

My Atlantic colleague Jonathan Rauch wrote to me that one thing that’s surprised him is, among Trump’s supporters, “the sheer energy that’s generated by transgression. The joy of breaking stuff and hurting people. It’s a million-volt battery.” He added: “I don’t think this ends after Trump. He has raised a half generation of ambitious men and women who have been (de)socialized by his style. The most successful businessman in the world is a troll. It’s just what smart people do.”

 

“Desocialized” is an arresting way to describe the right’s moral collapse. This goes far beyond politics; what we’re experiencing under Trump is a change in the American character, or possibly the American character laid bare. Cruel, spiteful, adolescent, gleefully destructive, glibly unbothered by the human wreckage it leaves—Rauch is right that it won’t end with this presidency, as pathologies that profound aren’t so easily cured. A population willing to be governed by a faction that’s openly eager to find a kill switch for the constitutional order is a population that can’t be depended on for anything, let alone global leadership.

 

Too bad for Europe that it has no choice, huh?

 

Not in the short term, anyway. Eighty years of outsourcing its security to the United States means that disentangling itself from America won’t happen soon, even if, per Friedrich Merz, the will to do so is there. The irony of the F-35 debate is that whether or not there’s a “kill switch” that can disable the jet, the aircraft is so heavily dependent on other American military assets that it could be hamstrung by simply cutting off access to those systems instead. True European military independence from the U.S. may take decades.

 

But it’s essential and inevitable so they’d better get cracking, and in the meantime, they’d better hope that nuclear brinkmanship can keep Russia at bay. American leadership is a spent force. The sooner everyone realizes it, the sooner a worthy successor might emerge.