AMNA NAWAZ: For a deeper look at President Trump's speech in Davos today and what it signals to the rest of the world, we return to our On Democracy series, which explores the laws, institutions and norms that have shaped America and the pressures they face today.

Tonight's conversation is with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, who's also the host of "The Atlantic"'s "Autocracy in America" podcast.

Anne, welcome back to the "News Hour."

Thanks for joining us.

ANNE APPLEBAUM, "The Atlantic": Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: I want to talk to you about the events of the last 24 hours.

Just as a quick note of transparency, because we're speaking about Europe and our allies so much, we should note your husband is currently the foreign minister of Poland.

But moving into your field of work here and your expertise, I just want to get your reaction to what we have seen in the last 24 hours.

President Trump going into Davos, threatening U.S.

military action in Greenland, threatening potential tariffs against European allies, walking both back on the ground and saying there's a potential framework deal.

What do you make of that?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I think the most important speech at Davos that has been made was the one made by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney.

And he used the word rupture.

He said, this is not a moment of transition.

It's a moment of rupture.

Everything is changing.

And, actually, the substance of President Trump's speech doesn't really change that feeling, the feeling of American allies that the United States that they knew for so long has changed in some fundamental ways, that the principles of collective security, which bound all of us together for a long time, are no longer valued, or at least not as valued as they once were in Washington, and that new, different -- new alliances and new kinds of relationships and organizations and institutions are going to have to be created to meet this moment.

AMNA NAWAZ: You saw that remarkable speech from Carney.

We also saw other longtime allies across Europe really start to chafe and push back against that growing pressure from Trump in recent days.

When you look at the transatlantic alliance, has it been bent, but not broken?

What is happening there, in your view, right now?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I don't think bent and broken are the right metaphors.

It's evolving.

The president's national security strategy made it clear that the United States doesn't see itself necessarily linked to its old allies in the way that it once was.

It's very skeptical specifically of Europe and of the nature of European liberal democracy.

And everybody's got the message, and they understand that now Europe will need to act independently economically, that seeking to mollify or even bribe the president, which some countries have tried to do, doesn't succeed, that Europe needs to have economic sticks, and, of course, that European - - Europe needs independent security.

It's actually gone quite a long way in that direction already.

Remember, the Europeans are now almost the sole supporters of the Ukrainians, both financially and militarily.

The United States provides intelligence and a few other things, but it's really now Europe's war already.

And we're moving in a direction when Europe will also be separated in other ways as well.

And I think that's the -- I think that's -- I don't think that's going to change.

In fact, both Carney and Ursula von der Leyen, who's the president of the European Commission, both used this word permanent.

We have had a permanent change.

In other words, it's not going to go back if there's a different president.

It's not going to change if President Trump once again changes his tone, which he often does.

This is a permanent change, and we need to think differently about the role of Europe in the world.

AMNA NAWAZ: Separately from Europe and from our transatlantic alliances, you wrote recently in "The Atlantic" about this idea of American dominance that we hear from President Trump, this apparent return to the policy of spheres of influence, right, where major powers sort of dominate their own backyards and neighborhoods.

You wrote in that piece: "Far from making us more powerful, the pursuit of American dominance will make us weaker, eventually leaving us with no sphere and no influence at all."

As we're marking the first year of this second Trump presidency, what are you taking away about how this president views America's place in the world?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: So there's sometimes a conflict between what President Trump says and what his advisers say, so you have to be careful about talking about a Trump doctrine or Trumpism.

Trump himself doesn't -- I don't think has a strategy.

He's interested, rather, in winning each conflict as it comes along.

But clearly there is -- there are people around him who believe that the role of the United States and the world should be to dominate the Western Hemisphere, to dictate the way the countries in our hemisphere work, who they trade with, who they're allowed to associate with, maybe even determine what kind of governments they have, and that that should be the role of the United States in the world.

And this is in the understanding, I think, of Trump himself and also, again, his -- some people around him, this is good, that we don't need allies, that allies are burdened, they're a cost, and they won't help us.

As I said, I -- if you look at the world that America built after the Second World War, the degree to which it was peaceful and the degree to which it helped America become prosperous was largely based on the fact that we had these allies, we had these alliances.

We had countries who were loyal to us, not because they were afraid of us, but because they felt that we had shared values.

This is the president -- this is actually the first president since 1945 who doesn't see himself as a leading democrat leading another group of democracies.

He's not interested in that idea at all.

AMNA NAWAZ: Picking up on that idea, what does all this mean for America as a democracy?

I mean, you have studied and written extensively on autocracies around the world and throughout history.

You warned previously about a potential democratic decline being set into motion in President Trump's second term.

How do you look at where we are now?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: So, there is a connection between foreign policy and domestic policy.

For many years, the fact that the United States led democracies in the world or described itself doing that -- sometimes we failed, but we talked about doing that.

Democracy was at the heart of our foreign policy.

It was the heart of our national identity.

Now that that's no longer true, then what is America?

What does it mean to be American?

There are other competing ideas now.

Maybe to be American means to be a white heritage American, meaning that you're descended from somebody who came over on the Mayflower or the rough equivalent.

Maybe it means being part of a Christian nationalist movement.

Maybe they're the real Americans.

And so the emphasis on democracy and the role that democracy played in our national sense of who we are has really begun to diminish.

And that has a foreign policy face and it has a domestic policy face.

The value of democratic institutions, of courts, of a neutral and meritocratic civil service, all those things were part of what made American democracy.

And we now have, as I said, first administration in a long time, at least certainly at the federal level, who didn't think those things were important and rather sought to politicize those institutions, to make them partisan, to change their nature and in some cases to undermine them.

And that has made us into a different country.

We see ourselves differently and others see us differently now as well.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, host of "The Atlantic"'s "Autocracy in America" podcast.

Anne, thank you.

It's always good to speak with you.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Thank you.