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Your Guide to Washington and the World’s 2024 US Election Means
The writer is a contributing editor for FT.
Canadian Mark Kearney picked up the gauntlet. The British Kiel Stage prefers to see other ways. Japan and South Korea lead a procession to attack both sides of the deal. Germany in the Atlantic has declared that Europe must go alone. Just as old American friends are applauding the trash cans of Donald Trump’s liberal international order, they respond differently. We need to be aware that we are on our side – both eavesdroppers and pacifists have the point.
Praise generally goes to people who are willing to stand up to “bullies.” By enjoying the fight, Carney changed his Liberal Party’s election outlook. Gaurium has become the mainstream in Europe. Emmanuel Macron’s demand for Europe to be freed from the Americans is reflected in Berlin Prime Minister Friedrich Merz. Trump worshippers about populist rights like Nigel Farage are becoming unstable.
There is no praise to keep quiet, the grace has discovered. As British guardians exaggerated special ties with the United States, the prime minister walked the nuances of opposition to Trump’s policies from advertising attacks on the president. He worked with Macron to create a new peacekeeping coalition to support Ukraine, and with some skill to bring the post-Brexit Britain back to the centre of the conversation about European security. European support for Ukraine for Ukraine has put the brakes on Trump’s enthusiasm to force Kiev to submit, at least, with support for Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Over the past few weeks, tariffs have suggested that the chaos of tariffs in the White House must say something about suppressing trade retaliation. At some point, Trump’s policies could collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. Eventually, the White House will know that American consumers want to buy all these foreign imports. Avoiding the White House rage in the meantime is not a bad strategy.
Of course, Britain will have to lose more than most people from Trump’s belligerent one-sidedism. That army is almost entirely shaped by the presumption that it will fight alongside the Americans in serious wars. The US is needed to maintain the Trident nuclear missile. It is separated from the largest market by Brexit, and it is hardly possible to get a collapse of exports to the US.
Japan and South Korea share similar dependencies across national security and economics in camps that “silently step on and he makes the offer.” They will evacuate under the US nuclear umbrella. China’s ambitions for regional hegemony make them vulnerable to the “right” approach to global issues supported by Trump. After all, who would say that Xi Jinping should not impose Chinese will on the Western Pacific if the US is claiming its right to operate the Western Hemisphere?
None of this is particularly distinctive vulgar, and does not make Trump look heroic when he publicly laughs at what the president has been told softly. Polls suggest that Europeans prefer leaders to join Kearney in the ring. To ease Trump might simply encourage him. He enjoys an obviously humiliating old American friend. The answer is certainly to show him that Trumpism has a cost. Didn’t we learn at school that defeating bullies is to fight back?
However, there is something about the different reactions than changes in national interests, tactical preferences, or different political temperament. It just so happens that both harmonious agents and retaliators are correct. They simply operate on different timescales. American allies must break their dependence on Washington. But they can’t do it too quickly.
Pax Americana is finished. Whatever happens next, the US is proving to be an unreliable ally in a more dangerous world than ever before. Other advanced democracies have no choice but to build defensive capabilities and develop new economic relationships. It is essential to fundamentally condemn the relationships that set courses of what Macron calls strategic autonomy.
It is also a job for generations. Economy and security dependence cannot be desired overnight. In the short term, priorities must be limiting the inevitable pain. If the US plans to withdraw from global responsibility, allies once need time before they take on them. Trump has shown he is not interested in the fair outcomes of Ukraine. However, Europe is not interested in speeding up the US withdrawal of all support to Kiev. It will take decades for European countries to rebuild their troops.
The impressive second-best deal with the whimsical US president may seem humiliating. And certainly, it should not be an excuse to delay others’ efforts to stand on their own feet. However, the US-led orders were held over the course of 80 years. That would be a long breakup.
