“I don’t give a s**t about NATO” stated Donald Trump in the presence of John Bolton, his national security adviser. This is not surprising, since he had long questioned this American alliance with Europe and had many times threatened to withdraw from NATO, including at the NATO summit in 2018. He did not withdraw during his term in office, most likely because he was talked out of it by Jim Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and even Mike Pence.

However, according to Ann Applebaum, should Trump be elected to another term, he will not be surrounded with people who understand Russia and Europe, since many of them have broken from Trump, either by resignation or firing. This time around there will be no one to control Trump’s disdain for NATO and for our European allies. While Trump’s withdrawal from NATO may be challenged by legal means, by those opposed to this action, before there can be a legal resolution, the damage would already have been done.

.According to to Ms. Applebaum,” the influence of NATO is not legal or institutional but psychological .” There is an expectation among NATO members of a collective mutual defense. The reason that the Soviet Union did not attack Germany or Poland or the Baltic states between 1948 and 1989 was not that it feared Germany or these other countries, but rather that it feared the commitment of the United States to come to he defense of these nations. Russian deterrence comes from the knowledge that the US is committed to a collective defense of a NATO member under threat and that it has the military to do so.

Trump could undo this commitment of collective defense spelled out by NATO through a single speech or a posting on social media. Once Russia or another adversary no longer fears a US response to attack, the chances of aggression become much higher. Who would have believed before February 2022 that there would have been a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Had Ukraine been a member of NATO would this invasion have occurred?

What does Trumps refusal to observe NATO’s Article 5 (collective defense) say to Taiwan and South Korea? How reliable are their alliances with the United States? While congress would be trying to block Trump’s withdrawal from NATO by legal means, Trump would pull ambassadors from their posts, prevent diplomats from attending meetings and stop contributing to NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Legally there is nothing preventing him from doing so. Trump could close US European military bases and transfer thousands of soldiers.

Without NATO, European countries would keep their military at home fearing invasion. Ukraine would run out of ammunition and Russia would bomb supply hubs in Poland and Romania. That has already happened, allegedly by accident, at locations close to the Ukraine/Poland and Romanian borders. Attacking supply hubs in Poland and Romania would make supplying Ukraine impossible.

According to Anne Applebaum, “the end of NATO would signal that the United States is no longer a reliable ally.”Eventually all of America’s allies would begin to hedge. European countries would cozy up to Russia. Asian countries would look to China. These countries, through their leaders, might develop a more favorable attitude to the autocratic methods of China and Russia.

America, whose image would have been severely damaged by Trump, would decline further. Eventually trade and financial agreements with the United States would suffer, impacting the US economy. Americans, distracted by Trump’s drama within American institutions, will not realize what is happening to American influence abroad, until it is too late.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for the Atlantic . She is an author, most recently of: Twilight of Democracy: The Seduction of Authoritarianism