LONDON — Madeleine Albright used to call the United States the “indispensable nation, opens new tab”. The former Secretary of State meant that the country had a special leadership role because of its vision and power.
With Donald Trump now pursuing an “America First” agenda, the rest of the world is discovering if it can make do without Washington’s leadership. The US president’s disdain for alliances and multilateral rules, which he once again displayed during his address, opens new tab to the United Nations General Assembly last week, means there is now a vacuum in world affairs.
There is a huge need to fill it. After all, security, measures to combat climate change and the world trading system are common goods that benefit large swathes of humanity. If each country pursues its selfish interests without protecting the conditions needed for life in general to flourish, the world could be heading for a nasty and brutish future.
It will not be easy to pick up the pieces because Trump is not just absenting the US from global leadership. He is also actively trying to wreck international norms over issues such as free trade, climate change and treatment of refugees. What is more, countries which wish to form coalitions of the willing without Washington risk angering a US president who has a capacity to punish those who slight him.
As if that is not enough, the world’s second-most powerful nation, China, is hard to work with. Many trade partners, such as the European Union, are worried that Beijing is undermining the world trading system by dumping products on their markets. The People’s Republic is also the prime enabler of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and is bullying neighbours such as the Philippines.
A further problem is that the obvious alternative leader, the EU, is weak and divided. Meanwhile, other middle powers such as Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom are too small to provide leadership on their own. That said, the need is so great that they are increasingly working together – and having some success.
TRADE AND CLIMATE COWS
The United States accounted for only 14 percent, opens new tab of global imports in 2024. So if other countries do not copy Trump’s tariffs, they can hang onto most of the benefits of free trade. If the rest of the world makes big efforts to liberalise commerce among themselves, it may even over time be able to compensate for the trade barriers the US is throwing up.
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Canada is making a big push in this direction. Its Prime Minister Mark Carney this month signed a new trade agreement with Indonesia, opens new tab and a strategic partnership with Mexico. He is also removing internal barriers to commerce within Canada.
The EU is doing something similar. It has deepened its partnership with the United Kingdom and cut trade deals with India and Mexico. It is also making progress overcoming France’s opposition to a planned pact with the Mercosur group of South American countries. However, it is not moving fast to remove its own internal barriers. A blueprint, drawn up by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, remains largely stuck on the drawing board.
There is similarly mixed progress on forming coalitions of the willing to tackle climate change, which Trump called the “greatest con job ever perpetrated” in his UN speech. The good news is that the United States only accounted for 11 percent, of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023. The bad news is that China, which is responsible for 26 percent of them, missed a chance to show leadership last week. It pledged to cut its emissions by 2035 only 7-10 percent from a peak it may not yet have reached.
Again, though, it is possible to make some progress if willing countries and institutions club together. A good example is the Inter-American Development’s plan, to buy up and securitise loans from commercial banks around the world provided they reinvest in projects aligned with climate goals.
PEACE COWS
The United States’ military dominance makes it hard for countries to form coalitions of the willing in security. But there has still been some progress in two of the biggest conflicts, Ukraine and Gaza.
It is true that Europe is not willing to provide security guarantees for Kyiv as part of a future ceasefire without some US support. Nor is it able to push down much the price at which Moscow sells its oil without Washington’s help.
But the EU is finally moving towards making a “reparations loan” to Ukraine, based on Russian sovereign assets that it froze in 2022. The key proviso is that Kyiv would only have to repay the loan, whose size could be 140 billion euros ($163.66 billion) or more, if the Kremlin paid war reparations. The European Commission and Germany have backed the plan. So has Britain, which is outside the EU. Although Trump’s support would be a bonus, Europe can make its own reparations loans because the lion’s share of the frozen Russian assets is in its territories.
Gaza is one place where America is indispensable. Trump is the only world leader who might be able to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. But other countries are still pushing for peace. The UN General Assembly earlier this month backed, by a large majority a Franco-Saudi plan, for both Hamas and the Israeli army to quit Gaza and hand over power to the Palestinian Authority. This initiative will get nowhere without US support. But Arab leaders, many of whom have good relations with Trump, seem at least to have helped convince him to oppose Israel’s potential annexation of the West Bank.
The current administration’s “America First” policy is certainly causing problems for the world order. But there is a silver lining. The so-called “Pax Americana”, the dominant geopolitical system since World War Two, was not always peaceful or just. Other countries now have a chance to show more agency, rather than sheltering passively under Uncle Sam’s leaking umbrella. The more they succeed, the more they will be able to construct a more balanced world.
