The Munich security conference showed a deep divide between Washington and its allies on many issues of international policy, and the West fears that Russia and China may use it to their advantage, an article published by the New York Times on Sunday claims.

Axar.az reports citing TASS that, the publication states that "European leaders have long been alarmed that [US] President [Donald] Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades", but "they had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain."

However, according to diplomats and analysts, during the Munich security conference, "the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete."

"No one any longer believes that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It’s broken," a senior German official cited by the publication stated.

According to the article, diplomats and experts warn that Russia and China may exploit these "trans-Atlantic fissures".

"The Europeans no longer believe that Washington will change, not when Mr. Trump sees traditional allies as economic rivals and leadership as diktat," the New York Times wrote. "An increasing number of Europeans say they believe that relations with the United States will never be the same again."

The newspaper quotes an analyst in German-American relations, who stated that after two years of Trump as president, "a majority of French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United States."

Another analyst stated that Trump is not the cause for the crisis in relations between the US and the EU, but a symptom "of the tectonic shifts in geopolitics that have led to the return of great power rivalry and centrifugal forces away from multilateralism". "In the post-Trump era, there is no return to the pre-Trump era. The status quo was Europe’s security is guaranteed by the United States. That won’t happen again," the expert concluded.