The New, New World Order

“Thank you for changing the conversation.” Last night, as he tried to convey the enormity of how President Trump has upended geopolitics in recent weeks, Britain’s Prime Minister spoke with British understatement.

Europe’s leaders, including PM Starmer, are surely shell-shocked as they confront the unpalatable reality of a new, new world order.

After decades of warnings going back to the Eisenhower era, the United States is finally yanking away the continent’s security blanket. The Trump administration is forcing its NATO allies in what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 disparagingly identified as “Old Europe” to face up to the consequences of more than three decades of free-riding and strategic incoherence.

Since the end of the Cold War, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Britain has chosen to prioritise welfare over warfare, particularly that bottomless money pit, the National Health Service. For decades, successive governments have assumed we would be living in a Kantian “Perpetual Peace” – despite all evidence to the contrary.

In his 1991 State of the Union address, President George H.W. Bush expanded on his vision of a post-Cold War “new world order”. Nations would be “drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind -- peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.” But even as he spoke, the Gulf War was underway: as part of an American-led coalition, British troops were preparing to go into combat to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

The 1990s new world order saw Somalia reduced to a failed state, civil war in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda and coups in Sierra Leone. Along with cautionary lessons about peacekeeping, it should be remembered how often Britain’s Armed Forces were sent into action. In the next decade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed the lives of 633 British personnel; thousands were wounded.

As they sheltered under the American defence umbrella, repeatedly taking a peace dividend in a war-torn world, for most NATO nations defence spending was little more than token. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, only the United Kingdom, Greece and the United States exceeded the alliance’s guideline of 2.0 per cent GDP. Last year, despite war in Europe, only six out of the 32 member states exceeded 2.5 per cent.

If the political will is there, money can always be found. In March 2020, Europe’s leaders decided to tear up any plans for a pandemic and instead close down their economies. Hundreds of billions of pounds and euro were then thrown at a fruitless war on Covid.

During his first term President Trump was rarely off the warpath about NATO members failing to pay their way. Today, as they realise the US could remove its security guarantee from Europe and confront the possible end of the alliance, the continent’s leaders can’t say they weren’t warned.

On Tuesday, PM Starmer capitulated to the new, new world order and found some funds for defence. In surrendering to American might, he followed the example of leaders of Mexico, Columbia and Panama, all of whom in recent weeks might have just as well have been paraded through DC’s streets, like conquered captives in a Roman triumph.

Only a few weeks ago, the government was letting it be known that defence spending might rise sometime in the 2030s. Instead, there will be an increase to 2.5 per cent GDP, up from the current 2.3 per cent by 2027. It’s a start.

Yes, Sir Keir, of course the decision was “three years in the making”. It had nothing to do with Washington, did it? Or with Labour’s disastrous misjudgement that Trump would lose the election. Or their egregious incivility during his first term. Will the PM and his Cabinet welcome another Trump baby balloon flying over London during the second state visit?

Kemi Badenoch’s first foreign policy speech was overshadowed by Tuesday’s defence spending announcement. The Conservative leader acknowledged the changing geopolitical landscape, but stressed that Britain’s national interests should be the paramount factor in any policymaking.

This statement of the obvious should hardly need to be spelt out, until Labour’s foreign policy record is considered. Paying to hand over the Chagos Islands to Beijing-friendly Mauritius; backing the overreach of the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice; suspending arms sales to allies; contemplating reparations … The government appears to want to seize any chance to act against Britain.

The national interest means a strong military and a strong economy, as Ms Badenoch noted. Her speech came from the realist, rather than the liberal, school of international relations. She was also realistic, accepting “That others, even friends, will ultimately put themselves first.”

The mercurial US President is nothing if not a showman. Silence fell in the crowded Oval Office as he read the King’s letter inviting him for another state visit. The tension grew. Would Emperor Trump give the King the thumbs up? Or the thumbs down? As much as his pronouncement that Ukraine has no chance of joining NATO (“not going to happen”) and the implication that any British peacekeepers in Ukraine should not rely on American help, the President’s theatricality around the King’s letter underlined just who is in charge.

Old Europe is realising that the United States’ interests – and the interests of American taxpayers – are coming now first. We in Britain should be aware that, in Washington, the special relationship could one day cool to indifference.

It is President Trump who is mindful of the maxim of the great Victorian statesman Lord Palmerston: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”