Text: America has blown 80 years of accumulated goodwill and trust among its allies, our American moderator was told. A rock-steady assumption of allied defence and security planning for literally generations has been that America would act in its own interests, sure, but that those interests would be rational, and would still generally value the institutions that America itself worked so hard to build after the Second World War. America’s recent actions have destroyed the ability of any ally to continue to have faith in America to act even within its own strategic self-interest, let alone that of any ally. The officer then said that even a swift return of America to its former role won’t matter. Because “we will never fucking trust you again.” The Americans at the table seemed somewhat startled by the heat of that pronouncement. I agreed with it entirely. So, it seemed to me, did most of the non-Americans. This wasn’t the only such moment at the forum this year, but it was, to me, the most interesting. And it was still being talked about the next day. “Thank God,” one allied official said to me. “Someone had to tell them.” If there’s one thing I think people should take from my visit to Halifax, it’s that. America’s former role is gone. And I think that Americans themselves are having the hardest time of all coming to terms with what that might actually mean in the long run.