All Quiet On The Western Front?
The post-World War II world that has existed for the last eighty years is over. The Western Alliance that dominated that period is gone, gone for our lifetimes. Many Americans probably assume that world not only still exists but will return in some form after Trump is gone. They are assuredly mistaken. Just as Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946 acknowledged the collapse of the British Empire and provided the spark for an American-dominated Western Alliance, so too has Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos signaled the death knell for the so-called American Century, the end of the Western Alliance, and offered a way forward.
Carney declared, “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
The thinly-veiled target of those comments was clearly Donald Trump and the USA. As Carney noted, “We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” But Trump has made that fiction no longer tenable, and Canada is a prime example of why. The threats to make the country the “51st state” and the not-so-surreptitious support for Albertan independence were direct assaults on Canada’s sovereignty. The arbitrary tariffs not only essentially unilaterally abrogated the USMCA trade agreement that Trump had already forced Canada to renegotiate in his first term but also was an attack on core components of the Canadian economy. The refusal to categorically defend its Article V obligations, the attempted annexation of Greenland, the open threats to European allies, and the abandonment of Ukraine all subvert the NATO alliance as well as diminish the security of Canada.
What Carney said out loud is what European leaders say privately. Like Canada, the Europeans have suffered the subversion of NATO, the arbitrary tariffs, and the support for Russian-backed far right leaders like Orban, Farage, Le Pen, and their ilk. Worse, they have to had to endure J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio as they went on what is best described as insult tours, lecturing Europeans about civilization and European values. Their disdain for the Trump administration is palpable though muted, and, like Carney, there is a broad realization that the relationship with the US has been permanently breached.
This is now abundantly clear in the wake of America’s illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran. Leaders in Europe and even the Mideast are desperately pointing out that they played no role in these attacks, while also decrying the abuses of the Iranian regime. But, as the Iranian retaliatory attacks illustrate, the mere presence of US military bases in their countries makes them potentially complicit. Moreover, Trump’s war crimes in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and now Iran decimate any remaining shred of credibility in a rules-based international order. The Maduro kidnapping and the Khamenei assassination makes every leader a potential target. Additionally, the Ayatollah was simultaneously a religious leader, so now religious leaders are potentially valid targets. And the fallout from an Iran descending into chaos will fall most heavily on its Gulf neighbors and Europe.
It took Obama to go on what was essentially an apology tour to repair the United States’ standing with its allies after the disaster of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War and its knock-on effects on migration and anti-Muslim bias. Biden had to perform a similar act in the wake of Trump’s tepid support for Ukraine and NATO subversion in his first term. Both efforts sustained our existing alliances despite some strain. There will be no third chance for the US going forward. As one European leader put it in the wake of Trump’s 2024 victory, we can’t keep putting our fate in the hands of a few thousand voters in Wisconsin. That is especially true when it’s clear the American people can no longer be trusted to elect responsible leaders, much less ones that aren’t racketeers, certifiably nuts, and/or autocratic war criminals.
Perhaps more importantly foreign leaders are realizing the stability of US governance and policy is gone. It’s not just Trump. The “guardrails” of the US legal and legislative systems at least somewhat restrained Trump in his first term. His second term has made it clear that those guardrails are gone. The foundations of US democracy are no longer reliable. The political and judicial systems have failed. The legislative branch is paralyzed by its structure and the fact that the Republican party has degenerated into a cult of personality. The rule of law has disintegrated. The legal system has been effectively dismantled since its two most important institutions, the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court, are now dominated by partisan hacks. The so-called “Blob” that kept the core of US foreign and economic policy on a relatively steady and reliable course for decades has lost all power. Deals with the US government are meaningless. Treaties, trade agreements, and contracts can be torn up on presidential whim. Corruption is rampant. Pay-to-play is now the norm and those who refuse face government extortion. Propaganda abounds as the US media becomes Orbanized at an exceedingly rapid pace. The supposed “stability” the US offered for eight decades has morphed into an agency of chaos.
Covid forced the world to rethink its supply chains. Trump 2.0 is forcing the world to rethink its relationship with the US. It says a lot that a leader like Carney thinks China is a more reliable partner than the US. A whole new world of trade is being built that is largely designed to bypass the US. The “sell America” trade is real as the world deleverages from the US. The declining dollar and the boom in foreign equity markets reflects the belief that America is no longer that safe harbor for investment. Similarly, the dollar’s declining status as a reserve currency is largely maintained by the limited options for an alternative. The best and the brightest from around the world are no longer interested in coming here. Worse, our best and brightest are actually looking to leave.
The post-Trump America will be a far different place than many of us have ever known, even assuming we don’t succumb to full autocracy. We will be a far more isolated country in a far more dangerous world. Americans abroad will find their reception a lot frostier compared to the general respect they used to receive, despite the ugly American stereotype and even when our leaders were awful. “I didn’t vote for him” just won’t cut it. We will be a poorer country with higher costs for goods and investment than before. We will be a stupider country (is that possible?) as the brain drain that has already begun intensifies. Our leadership in science and medicine will be gone. We survived eight years of G.W. Bush and the first four years of Trump. But there is no coming back from Trump’s second term. We will just be another sclerotic, aging, overextended, but still dangerous, superpower in decline, living off the myths of our past glories.