We face a cold and dangerous world – and this week it has just grown a whole lot colder
America withdrawing. China on the rise. The UK on its own. That’s why this historian warns...
THE world has changed, and decisively. The very architecture of global peace is starting to shake. Europe and Britain are divided and uncertain in the face not just of Brexit but of new and unforeseen threats. There is no end in view to the twin, connected crises of terror and migration, let alone the longterm rot of economic malaise. To the east, Russia seeks to exploit our divisions in new, disruptive and sometimes deadly ways.
Meanwhile China, newly committed to free trade and global institutions, looks set to profit hugely from the disintegration of old certainties.
But it is what happened on Friday in the freezing rain of Washington that will shape the coming decade most profoundly – and our ability to navigate new, uncharted waters.
When President Trump stood before the political elite of the United States, the Capitol behind him, and spelt out his doctrine of ‘America First, America First’, the 21st century became a more dangerous place.
In swearing the oath of allegiance, Donald J Trump assumed the most powerful office on the planet. One small illustration – on Wednesday, as one of his final acts, his predecessor Barack Obama dispatched two B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri on an 18,600km round trip to kill 100 jihadis in an Islamic State training camp in Libya.
Presidential office could hardly be further removed from a flagging career on reality TV.
It is about war and peace and issues that cannot be resolved by a ‘deal’.
For the past century, the exercise – and sometimes abuse, it is true – of American power has been central to world peace and prosperity. Yet Trump’s only reference to his allies in his inauguration speech was a demand they pay more for their own defence. He said nothing on how America would handle China – the most important relationship in the modern world – or of his wish to repair relations with the demagogue Vladimir Putin.
To Europe he made no reference at all.
Perhaps he is right to complain how little European Nato members spend on their own defence. Germany, France and Italy are the worst offenders, but they are not alone. Even the Baltic states, the most threatened by Putin’s Russia, fail to pay their way.
IT IS true, also, that the alliance has failed to come up with a way of combating Russian information ‘warfare’, which has resulted in a staggering 37% of American Republicans taking a positive view of Putin.
Yet for all the failings of Nato, this is hardly the time to fragment the forces of the West.
Russian-backed forces are still operating in Ukraine, remember, and Latvia has good grounds to fear Russian subversion.
Syria is still mired in battle, with Turkish forces the latest to join the conflict. Kurds and Arabs are poised to fight the day Isis is finally defeated or, to use Trump’s word, ‘eradicated’. The cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran could well hot up. North Korea is planning more nuclear tests; the South Korean government is in chaos. China has said it will resist any US provocations in the East and South China Seas where it is creating bases on ‘islands’ it has built.
Like Ronald Reagan, Trump will boost US military power, even if it is already bigger than the next 14 countries combined, notably by adding 50 vessels to the 300-ship navy.
But his apparent determination to cosy up to Putin – for whatever reason, strategic or personal – is causing justified alarm. A broken Nato and a fragmented Europe are precisely the goals that Putin (who has an economy the size of Italy, remember) wishes to achieve.
What will Trump do if Russia continues to probe Western defences in Europe or interferes in the forthcoming French or German elections? Where does this leave Britain, since it has been ostentatious in its criticism of Russia? Will Theresa May reverse course and join Trump in singing Putin’s praises?
Once again, however, the truly important relationship at stake is the one with China.
President Xi Jinping, as he made clear in his Davos speech, is bidding not just to defend globalisation (from which China has benefited) but the security framework established after the Second World War, including the United Nations. Remember, too, that as a heavily polluted country, China is committed to dealing with climate change.
Beijing was a signatory to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, along with the US, Russia and Europe. If, as he promises, Trump tries to sanction Iran, the deal will collapse and Iran will get its bomb. So will several surrounding Arab states that are terrified of Iran.
YET even before taking office, Trump chose to pick fights with Xi, criticising his trade policies, attacking his expansionism in the South China Sea, and failing to endorse the ‘one country, two systems’ policy towards Taiwan that has prevailed since the 1980s.
Then there is what outgoing president Obama described to Trump as his biggest nightmare – the erratic lunatic who rules nuclear-armed North Korea. Chinese co-operation is essential; only Beijing can exert pressure on the Kim regime.
If European coverage has been caught up with Trump’s swipes at Nato and his strange, unnerving friendship with Putin, it is the new President’s handling of the giant American economy which could prove the most immediately destructive to global security.
Not for the first time, it was the economy that won it.
Trump rose to power on the back of protectionist promises to voters who are trapped in a world of collapsed and collapsing industry – even if Friday’s apocalyptic speech made the rust belt sound more like Mogadishu than middle America.
Some things are going his way:
This is hardly the time to fragment the West’s forces
the economy he inherits enjoys 3.4% annual growth and 2.1% inflation. Unemployment is at just 4.7%.
So far, his threats to raise import tariffs on trucks and cars are working. Multinationals such as Ford have scrapped plans to move US jobs to Mexico.
Yes, his promise to invest $550bn in airports, bridges and road infrastructure is sorely needed, although if he keeps his promise to cut taxes, then these projects will add another $7.2trillion to a national debt that is already a vast $19trillion.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that these old-fashioned measures will work beyond the immediate term.
Swathes of low-paid manufacturing jobs have simply vanished from America and the redundant workforce lacks the skills necessary to join the so-called fourth industrial revolution.
Based on artificial intelligence, 3D printing of solid objects and robotics, this revolution will attack white-collar jobs, too – accountants, paralegals, journalists and teachers, plus many more in manufacturing.
A computer called Jill taught a class at Georgia Tech Univertemplates sity by email, without any of the 300 students noticing their ‘teacher’ was inhuman.
Driverless vehicles will make the second largest employment group in America superfluous, whether they specialise in vans or combine harvesters.
Will a cabinet of billionaires, a few of them from Goldman Sachs, really do anything for the millions threatened by technolDo ogy? It is not just a question for America. If, as I fear, the American economy does struggle after a brief resurgence, then the rest of us will start to sink with it – even without the global trade war that Trump’s threats to Chinese and other imports seem designed to cause.
Europe, meanwhile, must sit and watch. In so far as Trump ever mentions the EU, it is to hope that more countries will leave the stricken union.
we really want chaos on our doorstep? Some of Trump’s team are willing Marine Le Pen to win in France this May, in the hope of causing further damage, even though her economic policies are well to the left.
A world without the EU, of fragmented nation states competing for Trump’s favour, might sound good for America – but it would be good for America’s enemies, too.
For Brexit Britain, the new world is a harder and more worrying place still. Mrs May seems too small a figure to map out where the UK stands in a dangerously changing world. Now more than ever, cool geostrategic analysis is required, not bluster or sentiment.
However close to the front of the queue for a trade deal with Trump Britain might now be, it will get no favours. America has for trade deals, and the terms are always ‘take it or leave it’. American businessmen are not sentimentalists. They will still want to flood the place with cheap food – including genetically modified, antibiotic-riddled products, and a range of pharmaceuticals currently banned.
They will dictate to the desperate, happy to demand potential trade partners alters laws and regulations they do not like.
As America withdraws and economic power shifts visibly towards China, we will have an unpleasant choice – between a White House bent on America First or a repressive, communist China which nonetheless seems like an anchor in the coming storm.
Needy attempts to curry favour with Trump make me cringe.
For all the reasons above, we must not throw ourselves at Trump’s feet, however reassuring the ties of language, blood and recent history. The interests of Trump’s America are not automatically ones we all share.
It is a cold and threatening world out there, and this week it grew a whole lot colder and more threatening, still.
As power shifts to China, we have an unpleasant choice