Democracy and the International Order: Escaping the Doom Loop

Of what is the rise of national-populism the symptom? While introspection into the ills of democracy is in order, we should not succumb to navel-gazing or ignore the role that international trends and events play. Particularly in the United States, public fatigue at multiple military interventions abroad, often criticized from other Western democracies, has fueled a rebirth of isolationism and a shift from the 1950s Eisenhower slogan - “making the world safe for democracy” – to America First. Unsurprisingly, there are moves to unload part of the defense burdens on allies to focus on core interests and the top strategic priority – usually seen as China. Donald Trump’s election would indeed see a contest between isolationists (or “restrainers”) and prioritizers, as they are sometimes called. But even a victory for Kamala Harris would imply shifts from the transatlantic relationship that Joe Biden has personified, if not always carried to consequences. It may not be articulated so bluntly, but the pressure on allies will intensify in any case.

Trump’s own statements so far seem to hover between these two directions of isolationism or prioritizing. That tension is fast replacing the former paradigm, which was an opposition between engagement or “reset” and containment. This had long characterized U.S. foreign policy towards Russia and China. It is no longer the case.

The fuel for national-populism

Europe trends in the same direction of national-populism, with different reasons. On defense issues, part of Europe is decidedly non-interventionist and reluctant to commit more efforts. The multiple conflicts in Europe’s neighborhoods, the resulting flows of refugees mixed with the search for a better life, have placed the immigration issue close to the top of issues here. Unlike in the United States, this inflow comes with our low economic growth, which makes the influx harder to accept. Attempting to raise the drawbridge is a common thread of U.S. and European “populist” trends. Of course, no authoritarian regime has ever encouraged immigration. The semi-authoritarian states of Turkey and Pakistan are borderline cases. They host millions of refugees from the conflicts raging on their borders. North-east Asian democracies remain more closed to immigration, by virtue of their geography and by will, even as they face accelerated aging of their population.

It would be easy to radically suggest that Kipling’s white man burden is evolving into a case of white rage. In this interpretation, Western frustrations with lost status and identity lead to antiliberal, antiglobalist and ultimately identity-based politics. Ironically, these frustrations converge with grievances voiced in rising illiberal regimes such as India and Brazil, even though a genuine alliance seems unlikely.

We can also invoke a less controversial factor. Progressive, liberal democracies often cast ashes on their own heads, by blaming the defects and double standards of democracies, making them responsible for the mounting chaos and conflicts in the rest of the world. These defects and double standards are real, but far from unique to Western democracies.

This is exemplified in the United States by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, several steps beyond the affirmative action programs of the preceding era. In France, the extraordinary vogue, since the 1970s, of what is called a “bloc de constitutionnalité” from the preamble to the Vth Republic Constitution to include expanding norms, is a testimony to the ambition of democracies. A recent essay by French philosopher Marcel Gauchet calls this ambition “radical democracy”. Sometimes, it may be a bridge too far. The triumph of individual rights clashes with more collective and conservative values, including in our own societies. It is often associated with individual freedom, but it also creates many new norms in all areas of life that effectively constrain the same personal freedoms. Much of the new struggle between radical democracy and its opponents is a contest between rights and freedoms. That struggle is logically more pervasive in advanced societies - where there exist means to implement new norms.

Many of our norms are useful. Others place too many obligations or costs on personal freedom, or are achieved at the expense of customs. Their requirements hinder our reaction time against competition, challenge or conflict created by others. The very success of globalization means that economic competition has become more fierce and reduced our margin for effortless changes.   

It is also apparent that blaming our political process for all the gaps of governance, adding up historic faults, reflecting on the double standards that our interests sometimes create is a road that leaves us increasingly vulnerable. Particularly during the Cold War, the superiority of democracy was thought to reside in the ability to correct its own mistakes. The fragmentation of our polity makes this outcome more doubtful today, so long as our survival is not at stake, following 80 years of peace. Our adversaries are only too glad to save themselves even the trouble of holding a mirror to our faces. And today, it is not only our far Left that eulogizes an imaginary Global South, ignoring the crimes and inequities that go on in the rest of the world. It is also our most pessimist conservatives who are tempted to promote, as the far Right does, authoritarian leadership and policies based on immediate self-interest. In doing so, they find themselves in unison with the most authoritarian regimes. They are giving the wrong answer to real problems. And those wrong answers rest on popular despair, feeding in turn that despair though the social media’s doom loop.

Back to the Future

Both wrong answers have the same consequence. Our illiberal politics side with authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes on many of their value preferences. And our liberal-progressive camp eulogizes a resurrected and imagined Third World as the Global South. In a nutshell, that’s how you find our more authoritarian right in bed with Putin, and our populist left effectively siding with Hamas.

But the backsliding, which to many evokes a return to the 1930s, is not exclusively our responsibility. Russia, China, North Korea and most Middle East regimes are not failing democracies. They have been dictatorships for decades, with the occasional brief interval of democracy (Russia and perhaps Iran). In assuming that the engine for the mounting crisis is ours, we commit a sin of arrogance. Our adversaries – because that is what they are, and not just “competitors” - use this to blame us as the cause of every conflict they themselves have created and/or nurtured. We indulge in reversing causation because to do otherwise would hurt our pride and heritage: just look at France’s or the UK’s reluctance to concede that they are no longer grandes puissances and that we are losing agency. Brexit happened in consequence, while France makes attempts to replace with adventurous diplomacy what it lacks in the field of hard power or economic throw-weight. Others are perfectly happy with these illusions. It allows them to deny their own agency in the world’s chaos, and to broadcast a peace-loving, neutralist public diplomacy aimed at the rest of the world.

Remember the post 1989 era? With its promises regarding the end of ideology, the world-wide ascent of democracy, international rule of law including humanitarian intervention, it spoke of universal values backed by liberal and expansionist economic policies. If this was a peak of optimism in human history, it has now ceded way to a nadir of pessimism on the very same issues. Not for nothing do observers make a comparison with the shift from the grand illusion of 1918 to the Great Depression era break-up of an accepted international order. Both past optimism and present pessimism are focused on Western societies. Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes that once seemed ripe for harvesting have regained strength and initiative. At the heart of this change, there are two successive visions of international law – glorified, then crushed by reality. In the words of Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor of the Biden administration, “the world of the 1990s is over, and it’s not coming back, and it’s not a coherent plan or critique just to wish it so”. The key aspect of this change is that multinational institutions and rules made to be universal matter less than alliances of values or coalitions of well-understood interests.

Enshrining an imaginary Global South

In this new turmoil, emerging and developing nations are sometimes seen as playing the role of the antique choir commenting on the struggle between Antigone and Creon in Sophocle’s tragedy – whether it is Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Near East explosion or, most of all, the Sino-American competition.

There is a historical thread to this role playing attributed to a Global South. Uncertainty about leadership in the world generates chaos, something that the advocates of a “multipolar world” do not seem to notice, or that some of them are happy about. The “Twenty Years’ Crisis”, as the 1919-1939 era has been called by E.H. Carr, was also an interregnum when leadership was ceded by Great Britain, but not wholly assumed by an isolationist United States. This was the most proximate cause for the Great Depression, when the dollar had not adequately replaced the leading role of the British pound. The IMF’s Christine Lagarde has made an explicit comparison between “ the two Twenties”, 1920s and 2020s. The gap in leadership was a major factor in Western Europe’s policies of appeasement towards rising revisionist and revanchist authoritarian regimes, from Germany to Japan. Today, there is uncertainty about the will by the United States to shoulder the responsibilities of the international order, and skepticism about Europe’s capacity to take its own share of the burden. There is also a will – as yet hardly fulfilled – of our systemic rivals to limit or overthrow the US dollar preeminence over monetary and financial transactions, without any workable alternative.  

It is in this context that “the rest” has taken more relative importance to the West in geopolitical terms. We are not talking here of demography, or even of a rising share in world GDP (in total contradiction with claims of increased inequality among nations, of course). It is geopolitical weight and alignment that are reassessed. It is often assumed that the West (or America, or Israel or even Ukraine, not to mention Taiwan), are “isolated” in a sea of indifferent or hostile pronouncements. Some work hard at this, such as China pushing the One China principle at every one of its partners, or Russia courting BRICS members.

Yet, when did many nations last explicitly back a major geopolitical undertaking by America and allies in a conflict? There never would have been a UN military contingent in the 1950 Korean war if Russia hadn’t clumsily adopted an empty chair policy in the Security Council at the time. Literally no one apart from Australia, and South Korea which had to pay off its own blood debt, supported the war in Vietnam: strikingly, Asean was as absent as it could, while it clearly did not champion communism. There is an ongoing myth that “the West”, or America, have “lost the support” of other nations through our sins. The reasons usually cited: double standards or intervention into other people’s (read; states’) affairs. The truth is that it was never accepted around the world that “the West” had the moral high ground. In some cases, indeed, it did not. Colonial wars are the best examples of the latter. Yet, the rise of a postcolonial gospel also means that the positive aspects of the colonial legacy are seldom assessed: in the same manner, we should perhaps condemn Roman law as a product of Roman military occupation of Europe and return to Gallic or Visigoth justice. Humanitarian intervention under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter – distinct from regime change – was briefly accepted in some rare instances at the UN after 1989 (not so in the case of Serbia, a European country). It was quickly bonded to cases where there were cross-border conflict implications.

Instead, in a context of booming global growth, the “North/South divide” term appeared. It was emphasized as early as 1980 by the Brandt report, under the auspices of the World Bank, then led by Robert McNamara, the former U.S. Defense secretary who had led much of the Vietnam War! This ushered a period when issues of inequality and other geoeconomic factors came to the fore. Today, the IMF sees 152 nations as emerging or developing economies. Its outdated list includes Brunei, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China, while Malaysia appears to figure both as an advanced and emerging or developing economy. All of these have a vested interest, especially at the WTO (where each member chooses to declare itself as developed or developing…) or at the UNCTAD (to which the WTO refers as a source), in avoiding to be reclassified as a developed economy. In its entire history since 1964, UNCTAD has only upgraded once a country to the level of developed economies: South Korea in 2021. The country actually passed Japan’s per capita GDP in 2024.

The debasing of the United Nations

Needless to say, this classification creates a political constituency in the United Nations’ General Assembly and in its organization, also reflected in the 134 member list of what is still called the G77 (including again such developing economies as all Gulf states and Singapore). The trend extends to BRICS – originally four countries to which South Africa was added, now a ten member organization to which 34 nations are currently applying. Fuzzy indeed, the BRICS informal mandate appears to span development issues and, again, professed neutrality. Thus, important charter members of the United Nations simultaneously create competing organizations. China is most expert at this game of duplicating international organizations in order to leverage each one more effectively.

The gaming of the U.N. has spread to geopolitical issues. Nowhere are the lies at the heart of the world’s international organizations more evident than in the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, which currently includes Algeria, Sudan, China, Vietnam and Cuba. Or in the blatant hypocrisy that FINUL has become: a UN peace making mission mandated to prevent the militarization of Lebanon’s south after UN resolution 1701 18 years ago. Instead, Finul has become a passive – and mostly silent – hostage to the armed takeover of this same region by Hezbollah. This does not happen without a political context. Majority voting has turned the United Nations on its head, with China being the rhetorical champion of equality among all states, however large or small. And the Security Council itself will pass resolutions that cannot be implemented, and perhaps are not even meant to be implemented. They become nods to Sophocle’s antique choir - the jury of the Global South that constitutes the bulk of the General Assembly. There, double standards are seldom brought to the fore when they are not the doing of Western democracies.

In its days, the League of Nations drafted resolutions that were not actionable, because of the limitations of its charter. The UN, after having fulfilled for decades a peacekeeping role, is now descending one step below the League of Nations. A working coalition of Russia and China has paralyzed the Security Council. The General Assembly and entire arms of the United Nations is manipulated by voting coalitions that not only render the organization powerless, but also force it to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil if it displeases a majority of member states. In October 2024, Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, met with Vladimir Putin on the heels of the BRICS’ Kazan summit – this as Putin has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a U.N institution.

It is within this context that the notion of the “Global South” has ensconced itself. It is as much a product of the Western democracies’ new historical pessimism as of its lingering postcolonial guilt and a knee jerk acceptance of long outdated classifications. These conditions have led to the emergence and popularity of the “Global South”, seen both as a geopolitical force and as a claimant to an arbiter role. The term carries over a Third World heritage, which among defining features included neutrality and non-alignment. This happens in a new context, no longer fueled by revolution, but by our own perception of decline and ideological or even moral illegitimacy, and by a symmetrical quest of authoritarian regimes to be left in full control of their own affairs.

The limits of soft power in the new social media world

The Third World was about revolutionary change. The Global South is about guaranteed regime stability. The world’s authoritarians, who have always considered democracy as a hypocrisy while claiming themselves to embody the people’s will, are keen to pounce on our self-doubts, enlarging our wounds with the help of directed social media – this century’s form of mass propaganda and influence. The West’s soft power seems to rest more today on platforms and Netflix style entertainment (and for Europe, on a massive Disneyland or museum status) than on political or human values. It is our competitors who encourage the new huddled masses spewing discontent rather than seeking freedom. That authoritarians can shut down open dissent in their ranks seems to make authoritarians more efficient than our debating societies. The usefulness of democracy is questioned from within.

Or at least, this is what part of our polities have also concluded. The rise of so-called populism coincides with far left and far right forces capitalizing on a discontent that they also incite. Generational change matters, but in varying directions. Older Britons massively voted for Brexit, while the vote by the young went to Remainers. In France, we have a reverse situation: the French young proclaim their pessimism and fear of the future, and tilt towards radical parties at each end of the spectrum, while the older generation remains closer to pro-European views. Americans, living in the fastest growing developed nation, with disappearing inflation and a steep fall in unemployment, nonetheless express their discontent with the economy and with the administration that saw these results materialize, if it did not always create them. Immigration is nearly rising to the top as an issue, fueled as much by the pull effect of growth in the US economy as by a push from Central and South America, and especially from Venezuela. On issues alone (with the single and important exception of abortion), the Republican candidate would win the November election; Trump’s personality remains the mitigating factor.

Of course, neither China nor Russia are immigrant nations (although Russia proper was once fueled by workers from Central Asia) Nor is Iran, nor are North Korea, Syria, Cuba or Venezuela. Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese well-to-do or educated classes flock to the West for legal safety, health care, education quality, or simply leisure. Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban and North Korean refugees merely seek physical safety.

Income inequality among nations, an overstated issue

While it is obvious that the globalization policies of the 1980s started the greatest era of economic growth in human history, much of it outside the older industrialized countries, inequality among nations remains a major point of debate. Much has been said in the past about globalization as a form of increased exploitation of the lesser developed world. On the contrary, it is in the developed nations that the syndrome of the “forgotten working class” has taken a political shape. In a longer-term perspective, this year’s Nobel Prize winners had shown how colonization, depending on the model and place, accelerated economic development or hindered it. From 1945 to the early 1980s, what one could call separate economic policies between the advanced West (plus North-east Asia) and the rest increased inequality between countries. Globalization and post-communist policies then reversed the trend. As to the last twenty years, it is fascinating to observe that the report by an organization hardly suspect of understating global inequalities sees their relative decline: “a large decline in inequality between countries was driven by stronger economic growth in emerging countries, especially in China and, to a lesser extent, India during the globalization era that saw these nations rapidly integrate into the global economy, leading to significant increases in their per capita income and narrowing the gap with developed countries. (…) The recent decline in inequality between countries has only partially been offset by the disequalizing effects of faster population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, now the poorest region globally, and growing within-country inequality — including within China and India”. Many comments fail to emphasize this positive trend of the past two decades, burying it into a broader perspective from the 1950s onward, or confusing it with income inequality inside countries.

Of course, the widening income gap within countries also matters, as does the fact that the world’s poorest 5 % reside mostly in Sub Sahel Africa, posing a particular immigration challenge to Europe, in addition to the conflicts of the Middle East and South Asia. New technological trends, or the fight against climate change could once again increase the income gap between nations. For these reasons, inclusive policies are still needed. The pushback against globalization policies in the United States and Europe, as well as in many emerging economies, could also create more income inequality among nations.

Energy transition: a costly role model

The rise of inequality inside countries also affects the developed West. Its perception (sometimes more imagined than real, as is the case in France after redistribution of income is taken into account, or even in the United States where Social Security is also a massive redistributor) is what has fueled populism and a backlash against globalization. This is also reflected in a trilemma: given the global cost of our energy transition goals, it is illusory to think that we can at the same time combat climate change, boost the middle class in advanced economies, and reduce global poverty. At this point, whether this dilemma holds true or not matters less than the fact that it is believed both by much of public opinion in advanced countries defending their standard of living, and by many emerging and developing countries that reject costly measures against climate changes, and even more the penalties imposed on them for not meeting these targets. The consensus could be on more money, but that appears to be unrealistic.

The way ahead is indicated by China. Just as its economic growth is a good part of the diminishing global income inequality, the perception of its own climate dilemma is central. First hit by out-of-control carbon emissions, among the most threatened countries by temperature and sea level rises, it found a way to recover part of its energy transition costs via ambitious exports of new alternative energies. That is at our expense, of course. But on the one hand we cannot meet our energy transition goals without less expensive alternative energies, and we cannot hope that by virtue of exemplarity, the sacrifice of our economic growth (or even a degrowth process as advocated by some) would entice others to follow our path. Part of the backlash against forced energy transition from above is therefore a rational choice for the electorate in democracies, considering the opportunity costs. This is particularly true of the United States, where abundant energy resources exist. Yes, this turns a blind eye on the consequences for climate: after the benefits of moving from coal to gas, the CO2 and methane emissions from shale gas and oil extraction and processing have begun to rise. Self-interest is the necessary ingredient, here and elsewhere. We should always remember that about partners throughout the world.

All democracies face this type of short term/long term dilemma. In Europe, the equivalent conundrum could well be the choice between more defense spending, obviously required by a mounting threat from Russia and its quasi-allies, and the sacrifices this will entail for the large social portion of public expenditures, or for energy transition. In this case, it is not a specifically populist option, but one endorsed also by part of the middle of the road center of politics to refrain from raising military expenditures, and hope for the best.

Looking for a realistic European international approach: the Trump test

This should dictate more realistic approaches for democratic politics. We will focus here on external policies towards the possible advent of a second Trump administration, towards “the rest” (aka Global South) as opposed to the West, and towards the international system embodied by the United Nations and its web of institutions.

On the possibility of a second Trump administration, some things change from the 2016-2020 first Trump presidency, and some don’t. What changes: an increased malignity, openly announced by Donal Trump himself, towards democracy and rule of law. America’s checks and balances resisted the first term and the January 6 botched insurrection. Today’s U.S. Supreme Court as it is now composed, and the inability of the judicial system to prevent a man convicted under 34 felony counts and under 3 other indictments to run for the highest office in the land are facts. We should remind ourselves, however, that one of the main justifications of EU criticism about Poland under PIS rule was that the ruling party had altered the composition of the country’s top judicial instance. It is difficult to argue that we should have the opposite judgment now about the U.S. judicial system.

The other aspect that changes: an increasingly chaotic and dangerous international context. From Russia’s war in Ukraine to an exploding Near East, the North Korea-Russia military conjunction, China’s quasi-alliance and China’s increasingly aggressive posture around Taiwan coupled with its evident military progress, one could be nostalgic for the international climate of 2016.

There are two kinds of international realism. One dictates that if you cannot fight, you surrender, or even yield in advance, to your adversaries. The other is that you bandwagon with your friends or with those who have similar, or at least compatible interests. On the first option (surrender/yield), the European Union, in its declarative statements, has a robust posture facing Russian aggression. This is less clear of several key member states. On the second option, during the Cold War this often made for unsavory relationships. Today, it means compromise over values – both the EU and some member states are torn apart by moral postures that can amount to grandstanding if they remain powerless. Outrage is not a policy. The EU’s mixed record on sanctions regarding Russia – a political triumph, followed by checkered implementation, suggests that caution is in order. French diplomacy is a case in point. While it has declared an embargo towards Israel on weapons it does not even sell in any case, France is at the same time fulfilling contracts with Egypt or Saudi Arabia – who have turned their armies against internal rebellion in the Sinai or fought the Houthi regime in Yemen: that is indeed tactical realism at its best. Priorities exist separate from value judgements. The rise of a worldwide coalition of the unholy does not mean that we must bind ourselves to a holy alliance of the virtuous. To uphold multilateral rules, one should be more than a party of two.

Donald Trump is unpredictable, even if his changing entourage in the first term was not. Still, his campaign speeches have emphasized China as the main issue for U.S. foreign policy, along with boasts that his appearance would stop adversaries dead in their tracks and end several international conflicts. While some in his prospective entourage again voice the (not unjustifiable) requirement that Europe pay more for its own defense, that is not by far a central theme of the campaign.
Trade and the economy create, by contrast, an immediate risk of transatlantic conflict with Europe. This is where the EU is said to have already assembled an early-warning task force ready to face a presidency that would think that the EU is both fair game and an easy target for a win. Even in this type of clash, a limit can be reached quickly, hopefully on both sides. The EU has a strong and rising trade surplus in goods with America, while “in exchange” it is heavily dependent on American based IT software and platforms and is the main source of lending and FDI for the United States. Part of the latter is due to the high dollar and high interest rates. If the U.S. were to borrow a line from the 1971 Nixon-Connally doctrine (“our currency, your problem”) and let the dollar fall, it would certainly create problems for the U.S. domestic and international debt, but even more for the European economy, already under challenge from depreciated East Asian currencies.
The likely net prospect: even under Trump II, trade disputes may heighten but do not amount to a war in the real meaning of the word. The damage they might bring is on both sides of the Atlantic.

By contrast, a break-up of the alliance is perhaps wished by diehard European sovereignists as an opportunity for an independent Europe. But except in France where some see l’Europe puissance as the substitute for a failing national capacity, few have elevated their nationalism at the European level. Central and eastern European sovereignists or national-populists are not pro-European and endorse much of the rhetoric and ideology of Trumpism. Much more serious would be in the United States a coalition of isolationists and prioritizers around Donald Trump. Some members of his first term’s administration, for instance former state secretary Mike Pompeo, are quick to point out that on the ground, U.S. military support for Europe increased rather than decreased under their tenure. This could change. Not only Ukraine, but also the Near East will call itself to attention, much more strongly than in 2016-2020 when the Trump administration was still able to engineer the Abraham Accords.

We can argue that any U.S. administration needs ally support to face China – strategically because of technology and critical material issues, diplomatically and over sanctions. This is less true of other theaters. Europe, on the contrary, is extremely far from achieving strategic sovereignty, not to mention autonomy. This, as other aspects of European construction, is a commendable goal. But the way to go is not to put the cart before the horses. As far as we can see, we need a military alliance. There is no use for somber predictions that Trump II will discard it, but a need for precautionary measures to make this outcome less likely, or to be able to wait until America itself feels the consequences for itself of standing alone. This is, as someone said, the worst choice except any other. And it is therefore realism in action.

Splitting the BRICS, disaggregating the Global South

Realism should also dictate our attitude to the so-called Global South. It is not global, and it is not the South. How much is Turkey, a silent member of the EU to all effect except political participation, a country of the South? How much are Saudi Arabia or Gulf states developing or even emerging economies, except in the refusal to pay for global energy transition funds and to provide aid to those whom they call their regional brothers? What is the reality of the Global South when India abstains from two resolutions at the General Assembly, the first requiring an immediate cease-fire over Gaza (October 2023), the second requiring Israel to end without delay its presence in the Occupied Territories (September 2024), while part of Europe, including France, votes in favor of the same resolutions? Or when Brazil’s president Lula excuses himself from the BRICS Kazan meeting while the UN Secretary General runs all the way to Moscow to bow to Putin?

What we cannot achieve is moving third countries without taking into account their own interests. This is not the same as ceding to their views, which we mistakenly build up as a principled position. Most developing and emerging nations have come out from a long era of relative powerlessness, and their positions are less informed by principles than by specific interests. The best expression for this, including with its strategic ambiguity, is probably that of  “multi-alignment”, crafted by India’s minister of external affairs S. Jaishankar.

The main change from the past is that China, the world’s second economy with a large current account surplus and huge currency reserves, can indeed practice a checkbook diplomacy that mixes commercial interest with political suasion or coercion. This means that our withdrawal from the world, in terms of aid, trade protectionism and outright isolationism in the United States, or for Europe, in the form of non-intervention and passivity, leaves the world to China and its coalized partners. The West does encompass Australia, postwar Japan and the “new” North-east Asian democracies. Sadly, European sovereignists reject the notion of “the West”, while it has been superseded by the broader concept of democratic alliance in America.

Europe’s regulatory ambition for the world must be held in check, when we set examples which are not followed and risk turning us into a Galapagos archipelago. It is this twin requirement – less lecturing, more control – that is necessary in the new world that we are facing.

Coping with the U.N. system

Finally, there is the issue of the United Nations system, born out of an unprecedented phase of unilateral supremacy for the United States after 1945, and by extension only for its allies. Practicing diplomacy in an institution does not require believing in it. True, there is in the U.N. a large body of norms and some technical institutions that are useful. It would be hard to find a universally accepted substitute. Today, only a transatlantic coalition that reaches to third parties is able to retain control of these UN technical institutions. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a case in point as a battleground, where China – and Russia, with far less leverage – try to push new norms for the internet and take control of the process. In other instances, paying up while ceding control to our systemic rivals, themselves using their voting leverage but usually contributing far less, is becoming self-defeating.

The dilemma is also acute in the World Trade Organization (WTO). WTO rules are indispensable and in fact respected by smaller countries which can leverage them to compensate for their own lack of agency. But these rules cover less and less of global economic exchanges, and WTO reform remains persistently out of sight.

On these issues, there is little middle ground position or balancing role for Europe. Of the transatlantic relation, we could say that the choice is between hanging together or hanging separately. In reality, Europe would be the first loser in the second option, even if it does not benefit the United States either.
Let’s not underestimate the risks from a new U.S. direction. But let’s not make it a self-fulfilling prophecy by moving first in the direction of a major transatlantic rift.

copyright JIM WATSON / AFP
US President Donald Trump speaks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on January 21, 2020.