World leaders who sparred with Trump express relief mixed with caution at Republican election rout

World lead­ers who have sparred with the “Amer­i­ca first” Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump greet­ed the rout of his Re­pub­li­can Par­ty in the U.S. midterm elec­tions with a mea­sure of re­lief on Wednes­day, al­low­ing them­selves to hope for a less com­bat­ive U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy.

But that hope was sea­soned with ex­pec­ta­tion that Amer­i­can vot­ers’ re­buke would not nec­es­sar­i­ly end the U.S. con­flict with Iran or change Trump’s poli­cies on tar­iffs or his luke­warm-at-best sup­port for Ukraine and Amer­i­ca’s Eu­ro­pean al­lies.

Pro­gres­sive politi­cians cast the re­sults as part of a trend of lib­er­al come­backs around the world, fol­low­ing re­cent de­feats for pop­ulists on the right in Hun­gary, Brazil and Ser­bia.

Spain’s so­cial de­mo­c­ra­t­ic Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez wrote on X that Amer­i­cans had vot­ed “Against hate. Against machis­mo. Against cli­mate de­nial­ism and against the priv­i­leges of the elites.”

“It hap­pened in Brazil. It just hap­pened in the US. And it will hap­pen soon in Spain,” wrote Sánchez, who faces an elec­tion on Nov. 29.

Nor­we­gian For­eign Min­is­ter Es­pen Barth Ei­de said the ma­jor­i­ty of Amer­i­cans had sent a clear mes­sage that “they have had enough of MA­GA and now want a dif­fer­ent course. Enough of po­lar­iza­tion.”

Eu­ro­pean lead­ers are hope­ful but wary

British Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham ex­pressed hope the elec­tion re­sults would fo­cus minds in Wash­ing­ton and oth­er cap­i­tals on end­ing the Iran war, which has sent fu­el prices soar­ing — a ma­jor source of frus­tra­tion for vot­ers.

“The world has an op­por­tu­ni­ty now to unite around the is­sue that is af­fect­ing us all, and that’s the cost of liv­ing,” Burn­ham said dur­ing a vis­it to the Com­mon­wealth sum­mit in An­tigua. “But I can’t get peo­ple’s cost of liv­ing pres­sures down un­til the con­flict in the Mid­dle East is re­solved.”

That and “the con­flict in Ukraine start­ed by Rus­sia. These are the things we have to fo­cus on now, and I hope the world has a mo­ment to do that.”

But oth­ers in Eu­rope cau­tioned that, with Trump in pow­er for two more years, there would be no quick change to Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, which has strained de­fense, eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic al­liances to the break­ing point. The pres­i­dent has be­rat­ed Eu­ro­pean lead­ers over every­thing from im­mi­gra­tion to wind farms, roiled their economies with tar­iffs, threat­ened to pull the U.S. out of NA­TO and ex­pressed a de­sire to take over Green­land, a semi­au­tonomous ter­ri­to­ry of NA­TO al­ly Den­mark.

Aus­tri­an For­eign Min­is­ter Beate Meinl-Reisinger said that “in­de­pen­dent­ly of the elec­tion out­come, our se­cu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty in Aus­tria and Eu­rope must not de­pend on how peo­ple in Kansas or Iowa vote. That’s why we are strength­en­ing our own de­fense ca­pa­bil­i­ty and our own com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

Lau­rel Rapp, di­rec­tor of the U.S. and North Amer­i­ca pro­gram at the Chatham House think tank, said there won’t be “a ‘we’re back’ mo­ment in the U.S. re­la­tion­ship with Eu­rope.”

“I don’t ex­pect this will sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ap­proach to Eu­rope,” she said. “It’s been a very trans­ac­tion­al one, one that has deep skep­ti­cism about the val­ue Eu­rope can of­fer the U.S. In terms of a de­fense re­la­tion­ship.”

Rus­sia hopes Trump will stick to his cur­rent ap­proach

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so has tried to pres­sure Ukraine to end a war that Rus­sia start­ed with its full-scale in­va­sion in 2022. Ukraine ac­cused Wash­ing­ton of de­lay­ing the de­liv­ery of vi­tal in­ter­cep­tor mis­siles and re­port­ed that a tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion to the Star­link and Starshield satel­lite in­ter­net ser­vice im­ped­ed its abil­i­ty to de­fend against Russ­ian at­tacks.

Last month, even as he fired in­sults at Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, Trump waived sanc­tions on Rus­sia even though Con­gress had over­whelm­ing­ly ap­proved the mea­sures as part of leg­is­la­tion aimed at sup­port­ing Ukraine.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said Wednes­day that Rus­sia hoped Trump “will con­tin­ue his peace­mak­ing ef­forts” re­gard­less of the elec­tion out­come.

A promi­nent Ger­man law­mak­er urged Re­pub­li­cans to see the re­sult in part as vot­ers’ ver­dict on Trump’s “wrong for­eign pol­i­cy.”

Jür­gen Hardt, a for­eign pol­i­cy spokesper­son for the par­lia­men­tary group of Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz’s cen­ter-right bloc, told ARD tele­vi­sion he hopes that Trump will “ex­er­cise more rea­son” on for­eign af­fairs.

South African Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa, who has been a tar­get of Trump’s base­less claims that his gov­ern­ment dis­crim­i­nates against the coun­try’s white mi­nor­i­ty, said the De­moc­rats tak­ing con­trol of both hous­es of Con­gress would “in­tro­duce a new era in world re­la­tions.”

But Rapp, from Chatham House, said that Con­gress will have an eas­i­er time con­strain­ing Trump do­mes­ti­cal­ly than in for­eign pol­i­cy.

“On a lot of the for­eign pol­i­cy tools in his tool kit, Trump re­tains a lot of lat­i­tude to use them at his will,” she said. “De­moc­rats have said they’re go­ing to hold votes on the Iran war, but mean­ing­ful­ly be­ing able to con­strain him on some of these uni­lat­er­al pieces is go­ing to be tough.” —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JILL LAW­LESS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Geir Moul­son in Berlin, Suman Naishad­ham in Madrid, Clau­dia Ciobanu in War­saw, Poland, and Ger­ald Im­ray in Cape Town, South Africa, con­tributed to this sto­ry.