President Donald Trump threatened last week to withdraw troops from Italy. The threat followed his public accusation that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “lacked courage” after she defended Pope Leo XIV against Trump’s attacks, and refused to allow U.S. warplanes to transit Italian airspace for strikes on Iran. These two leaders began 2025 as close allies. That now seems like a long time ago.
Still, we shouldn’t be surprised that relations have gotten to this place. Trump’s tariffs on European goods, including Italian exports, caused frustration in Italy. The war against Iran has also raised energy prices for Italian consumers and increased cost-of-living fears. Trump also recently claimed that European allies had “stayed back” in Afghanistan, a statement that drew Italian government riposte that it lost 53 soldiers in that conflict. The Pope Leo XIV episode brought the tensions into the open. Trump attacked the pontiff for criticizing the American war on Iran. Meloni responded that Trump’s remarks were “unacceptable.” Trump then told an Italian newspaper he was “shocked” by Meloni’s behavior.
Another reason for the shift is the Italian leader’s domestic standing. In Italy, roughly 80% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the American president. Meloni’s defeat in a March referendum on judicial reform was seen, at least in part, as a protest against her association with Washington. A 2027 general election is now approaching.
But this isn’t just about Trump.
Yes, Trump has made it difficult for the Italian leader to keep close to Washington. That said, an underlying anti-American disposition was already there long before Trump arrived. Pew Research Center polls from 2003, when the Iraq War began, showed that 53% of respondents across the European Union viewed the United States as a threat to world peace. That put the U.S. alongside Iran and North Korea. Similarly, a poll conducted across six European countries in March 2026 found that 46% of Italians considered the U.S. a threat. The figure was 42% in Belgium, 37% in France, and 30% in Germany.
The problem extends well beyond Meloni.
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European leaders have chosen to cater to public skepticism, rather than explain where the real threats exist. In so doing, they have made themselves prisoners of their own politics. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the gap between what the security situation required and what the public had been prepared to accept was clear. That sentiment is why Meloni is now constrained from allowing a key security ally to use its airspace during operations against a regime that directly threatens European and global stability.
Whatever the grievances, and some are legitimate, Washington was not asking Italy to join the fight, only to permit overflight, and even that was a stretch too far.