When former President Donald J. Trump told a campaign rally in South Carolina last weekend that he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies who didn't pay, there were gasps of shock in Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo and elsewhere around the world. But not in South Carolina. At least not in the room that day. The crowd of Trump supporters decked out in Make America Great Again T-shirts and baseball caps reacted to the notion of siding with Moscow over longtime friends of the United States with boisterous cheers and whistles.
The old consensus that endured even in the initial years after the end of the Cold War has frayed under the weight of globalization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession of 2008-09 and Mr. Trump's relentless assault on international institutions and agreements. While polls show most Americans still support NATO and other alliances, the increasingly vocal objections in some quarters hark back to a century ago when much of America just wanted to be left alone.
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