Dear allies of America, please don’t confuse our president with us | Robert Reich
A Guardian columnist argues that US allies should separate Trump’s Iran war from “Americans” writ large—an appeal that blurs the harder question of who can actually constrain a president once the fighting starts.
Mar 19, 2026
Sources
Summary
Robert Reich urges America’s allies not to “confuse” Donald Trump with the American public after allies declined to join US-led efforts tied to reopening the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran war. The column frames allied refusals as a rejection of Trump personally and emphasizes US public embarrassment, while largely skirting the concrete constitutional and institutional limits on stopping a sitting president’s war policy. The story matters because it highlights how quickly alliance trust can fracture when major military actions proceed without consultation—and how domestic dissent doesn’t automatically translate into accountability.
Reality Check
Allies weren’t just reacting to Trump’s tone; public reporting around the same dispute emphasizes process—several governments said they were not consulted before offensive operations and therefore would not join them. (bloomberg.com)
Domestic opposition in the US can be real and widespread, but it is not the same thing as an operational constraint: absent near-term congressional action or other binding checks, allied governments still have to plan around decisions made by the US executive branch, not around US public sentiment.
Detail
The piece is an opinion column by Robert Reich (former US labor secretary; UC Berkeley professor emeritus) urging allied publics and leaders to distinguish Trump from most Americans.
Reich cites allied refusals to join operations related to reopening/clearing the Strait of Hormuz, attributing them to lack of consultation before the offensive. (bloomberg.com)
France’s president Emmanuel Macron is quoted as saying France would not take part in operations to open/liberate the strait “in the current context.” (aljazeera.com)
Canada’s foreign minister Anita Anand is quoted as saying Canada was not consulted prior to the offensive and has no intention of participating. (bloomberg.com)
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is cited as saying the UK would not be “drawn into the wider war,” while discussing a collective plan to reopen the strait. (msn.com)
Reich describes Trump responding by claiming the US does not need NATO or other allies’ help, and then pivots to arguing the US needs allied cooperation on climate, pandemics, trafficking, poverty, and defending democracy.
The column calls for allied patience and solidarity with US domestic opposition, stating Americans are working to “resist,” “contain,” protest, and remove Trump “as quickly as we possibly can.”
Missing context for readers: the column does not lay out what legal/political mechanisms (Congressional authorization, appropriations, court challenges, impeachment, elections) could realistically stop or limit an ongoing war in the near term.