The first seven weeks of President Trump’s second term have unbalanced fundamental strategic assumptions that the United Kingdom and Europe have relied on for decades. It is too early to say with confidence whether these are passing tremors or a more lasting realignment, but we are living in a different world from the one that existed before Jan. 20, and we will be doing so for some time.

These geopolitical shifts have been acutely unsettling for Britain. There is a lot of cant about the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K., which has never been a straightforward bond, nor one of equals. Nevertheless, for more than 80 years, it represented a basic connection from which much else could flow. Suddenly, in 2025, political, diplomatic and military leaders in London are wondering if they can make any assumptions at all.

One of the most shocking conversations that can now be heard, even if only in whispers and corners, is about the U.K.’s strategic nuclear deterrent.

When the British government decided in 1946 and 1947 to develop its own atomic bomb, the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, arriving late to a cabinet committee meeting, went to the heart of the issue. “We’ve got to have this thing,” Bevin said, referring to the bomb. “I don’t mind it for myself, but I don’t want any other foreign secretary of this country to be talked at, or to,........

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