Nothing is safe in absolute terms but through Obama, European leaders could feel confident that the United States would honor its treaty obligations. The idea o

Nothing is safe in absolute terms but through Obama, European leaders could feel confident that the United States would honor its treaty obligations. The idea of an American President working in conjunction with Russia to run a shakedown on a European power wasn’t even viable in the Tom Clancy-level of cold war novel. So I’d think of it similar to how climate change has affected property risk assessment: even if your home was never absolutely safe from flooding or wildfire, your practical assessment of how much effort you should spend protecting against those risks was quite reasonably lower in the era before once in a century or once in a thousand years events became once in a decade.