By Eva RoytburgFortuneMarch 16, 2026More than two weeks into a war President Donald Trump started without asking allies for buy-in, he is now asking for backup, and mostly getting left on read.Trump spent the weekend demanding that allies, China, and other Asia-Pacific nations send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally flows. He even warned Sunday that NATO faces a “very bad future” if allies don’t step up, marking another threat just two months after he precipitated an existential crisis for the alliance over Greenland.Since the U.S. and Iran launched strikes on Feb. 28, Iran has effectively shut the waterway and may have even begun laying mines. Over the weekend, the messaging around the Strait of Hormuz remained muddled: Tehran said that the Strait was “open to all” except America and its allies, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed on CNBC Monday morning that it was the U.S. that “allowed” Iranian oil tankers to cross the strait. The price of U.S. oil lowered significantly on Bessent’ s comments, now under $95 a barrel.[...]Germany was very blunt.“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It is not NATO’s war,” a spokesperson for Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday, adding that Berlin had “not considered” participating before the war began and will not be considering it now.Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel also laid it on thick, saying that the NATO member is happy to help with satellites and communications but “Blackmail is also not what I wish for.”
Okay folks, remember last summer when Trump wanted to annex Greenland and hurled all kinds of threats at NATO and Europe? He’s living out every cliché in the book: burning bridges, reaping what he sowed, and painting himself into a corner. After the way he’s treated them, what does he honestly expect? Trump is now stewing in his own juice as his chickens come home to roost and suffering the consequences of his own ineptitude.
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