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 While most governments were careful not to comment publicly on a
speech by a U.S. presidential candidate, Germany's foreign minister
veered from that protocol to express concern at Trump's wording.
"I can only hope that the election campaign in the USA does not lack
the perception of reality," Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
"The world's security architecture has changed and it is no longer
based on two pillars alone. It cannot be conducted unilaterally," he
said of foreign policy in a post-Cold War world. "No American
president can get round this change in the international security
architecture.... 'America first' is actually no answer to that."
Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister who
served as UN envoy to the Balkans in the aftermath of the Yugoslav
wars of the 1990s, said he heard Trump's speech as "abandoning both
democratic allies and democratic values".
"Trump had not a word against Russian aggression in Ukraine, but
plenty against past U.S. support for democracy in Egypt," Bildt said
on Twitter, referring to lines from Trump's speech that criticized
the Barack Obama administration for withdrawing support for autocrat
Hosni Mubarak during a 2011 uprising.
 "FIRST ISOLATIONIST CANDIDATE"
Trump's speech, uncharacteristically read out from a teleprompter,
seemed aimed at showing a more serious side of a politician who has
said he intends to act more "presidential" after months of speaking
mainly off the cuff.
He promised "a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign
policy" in contrast to the "reckless, rudderless and aimless"
policies of Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Trump's likely Democratic opponent if he secures the Republican
nomination.
The speech included no dramatic new policy proposals that might
generate headlines, such as his past calls to bar Muslims from
entering the United States or to build a wall on the frontier with
Mexico.
Where he was specific, like rejecting the terms of last year's
nuclear deal with Iran, calling for more investment in missile
defense in Europe and accusing the Obama administration of tepid
support for Israel, he was firmly within the Republican mainstream.
A major theme -- that more NATO allies should spend at least 2
percent of their economic output on defense -- is one that has also
been taken up by the Obama administration itself, including
repeatedly during the president's visit to Europe last week.
Nevertheless, Trump's rhetoric raised alarm in allied countries that
still rely on the superpower for defense, particularly the phrase
"America first", used in the 1930s by isolationists that sought to
keep the United States out of World War Two.
Former South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Sung-han, who now
teaches at the Korea University in Seoul, said Trump would be "the
first isolationist to be U.S. presidential candidate, while in the
post-war era all the U.S. presidents have been to varying degrees
internationalists.”
 “Saying the U.S. will no longer engage in anything that is a burden
in terms of its relationships with allies, it would be almost like
abandoning those alliances," he said. “It will inevitably give rise
to anti-American sentiment worldwide.”
Xenia Wickett, head of the U.S. and Americas Programme at Britain's
Chatham House think tank, said the speech “suggests Trump would make
America’s allies less secure rather than more.
"He talked about allies being confident but all of his rhetoric
suggested that America should be unpredictable and that America’s
allies needed to stand up for themselves."
"DISASTER"
Earlier in the U.S. nomination process, foreign leaders were not shy
to condemn Trump openly and publicly.
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In December, when Trump called for his temporary ban on admitting
Muslims, British Prime Minister David Cameron called him "divisive,
stupid and wrong". Hundreds of thousands of Britons signed a
petition calling for Trump to be banned from Britain for hate
speech, which was taken up in parliament. Cameron declined to ban
Trump, but said: "If he came to visit our country, I think he would
unite us against him."
In January, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel lumped Trump
together with the leaders of European far-right parties as "not only
a threat to peace and social cohesion, but also to economic
development".
These days, with Trump now seen as likely to win his party's
nomination, European officials are more circumspect in public, but
sound no less alarmed in private.
A Trump presidency “would be a disaster for EU-U.S. ties," said one
senior EU official involved in shaping foreign policy in Brussels.
"Right now, we and the Obama administration generally understand
each other. I don’t think we understand Donald Trump. He has no
understanding of the delicate, complex nature of foreign policy on
Europe’s doorstep.”
Nevertheless, some of the policies Trump shares with other
Republicans do have sympathetic audiences abroad.
Ryszard Terlecki, head of the parliamentary group of Poland's ruling
rightwing Law and Justice party, said Trump had a point when
criticizing the Obama administration for backing away from plans for
increased missile defense.
"This decision influenced very badly the security of this part of
Europe. If it weren't for that, the conflict in Ukraine would not
escalate," he told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly opposed the
Obama administration's deal with Iran, and Trump's speech, like an
earlier one to a pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, went down
well with some right-leaning Israelis.
"Trump wants an America that is decent, strong, loyal - but also no
patsy. And he sees in Israel the most loyal ally of the U.S." wrote
Boaz Bismuth, diplomatic correspondent for the pro-Netanyahu daily
Israel Hayom.
In the Arab world, where governments and their citizens are also
alarmed at the rise of non-Arab Iran, Trump's strong rejection of
the deal with Tehran is a popular position that would have been
embraced if expressed by another candidate.
But Trump's previous call to ban Muslims from the United States has
made him anathema in the region. Emirati political analyst
Abdulkhaleq Abdullah said no speech would be enough to salvage his
reputation there: "He's a racist and a chauvinist who will never be
widely welcomed in the Arab world."
Or, as Kuwaiti twitter user Mohammed al-Ammar wrote: "Some of his
speech is correct and logical, but the problem is, he's still
#Trump."
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Dan
Williams in Jerusalem, Jack Kim in Seoul, Noah Browning in Dubai,
Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw and Guy Faulconbridge in London; writing by
Peter Graff; editing by Anna Willard)
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