Trump’s new axis of friendly dictators is a threat to US allies – and decades of joint intelligence

After the US abandoned the UK and the EU to vote with Russia at the United Nations, the West can no longer trust the Americans – which is a blow for our secret services, says world affairs editor Sam Kiley

Policies can drift and diplomacy meander. As great powers try to resolve wars and conflicts, obfuscation and sleight of hand are inevitable and sometimes essential. But when a great power changes sides in the halls of the United Nations, it’s not a play – but a betrayal of their allies.

On Monday, the United States abandoned the United Kingdom, France and the whole of the European Union to vote alongside Russia, North Korea and Israel at the UN’s General Assembly.

The conclusion is that, under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US cannot be considered an ally of other Western democracies and must now be treated as a potential foe.

In the world of espionage, he has been seen as a liability since he was last elected president in 2016.

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada is now all but broken. Anxious efforts are being made to keep sensitive material away from the US, a breach of the agreement that the five nations always shared almost everything they had.

The breakdown of trust at the level of secret intelligence will have devastating effects on counterterror operations worldwide – and on the fight against Russia in Ukraine.

The US and UK have been supplying real-time critical targeting and other intelligence data to Ukraine for the last three years. If this broke down, Kyiv would be left without crucial signals and satellite intelligence-gathering systems.

Trump’s lazy attitude to secrets had already deeply worried spymasters in allied countries. Now that he is siding with their enemies in international forums, and has shown he wants to place ideological allies in vital roles inside the CIA and at the National Security Agency, allied trust in America’s community of spooks is at an all-time low.

The new American-led coalition failed to prevent the UN’s General Assembly from passing a resolution which condemned Russia’s aggression on the third anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and his attempts to murder the nation’s president.

Later the same day, though, Russia, China and the US again teamed up; this time to pass a watered-down UN Security Council resolution which did not blame Russia for invading Ukraine.

The UK and France, who have veto powers at the UN Security Council, abstained from the US-sponsored Ukraine resolution, along with Denmark, Greece and Slovenia. It acknowledges “the tragic loss of life throughout the Russia-Ukraine conflict” and “implores a swift end to the conflict and further urges a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia”; there is no blame placed on Russia for the invasion.

“There can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war,” Britain’s UN representative Dame Barbara Woodward said.

But the Trump administration and its new friends ensured that the UN’s documents established just that.

In doing so, the US ended decades of close cooperation with allies. Trump’s delegation relied on Russia, which is led by a man for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant.

At the General Assembly, the US was supported by Israel, which is led by a man also wanted by the ICC, Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea was also on board – a nation run by the hereditary despot Kim Jong Un which is also supplying Russian forces with men and ammunition. Belarus also joined the Americans in trying to soften the General Assembly’s vote on Ukraine.

China, another Russian ally in the invasion of Ukraine, also backed the US resolution at both the General Assembly and the Security Council.

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are all involved in the war against Ukraine, which the British ambassador to the UN described as a threat to her country and to Europe. In 2023, they were considered the “new axis of evil” by the US.

Now they’re Trump’s new friends in an axis of dictatorships that threaten the way of life which America has spent 80 years defending.

“These are the models of politics and leadership which Trump most wants to emulate, they are autocracies and that’s what he is trying to establish in the US – just look at the domestic policies he’s pursuing,” a senior Whitehall official told The Independent.

“America’s allies need to recognise that the US under Trump is no longer a trustworthy ally, and he is definitely no friend.”

It is revealing that the US standing against its traditional allies alongside its traditional enemies has caused outrage among former politicians and commentators, but government officials have been quiet.

“No one knows how far in the wrong direction Trump will go – and no one wants to push him even closer to our enemies,” the Whitehall official said. “It’s arm’s length from now on.”