The European Union is preparing a massive package of tariffs in retaliation for Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland. But surviving the latest crisis will not be enough.
Planning for a world minus one
European leaders are hoping that a united and resolute response will persuade Trump to back away from his threat to hit them with fresh tariffs unless Denmark agrees to cede Greenland to the United States. But even if the United States president retreats – and there is no sign that he is minded to do so – his actions since the start of this year must prompt an urgent rethink of relations with Washington.
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney is a step ahead of the Europeans, as the dramatic reversal of his country’s approach to relations with China shows. In Beijing last week, Carney made clear that closer co-operation with China on trade, climate, finance and other issues are part of a broader diversification of relationships that has also seen Canada join the EU’s joint defence procurement scheme.
“We have to understand the differences between Canada and other countries, and then focus our efforts to work together where we’re aligned. It’s with this approach that Canada is forging a new strategic partnership with China,” he said.
“Like-minded countries, just to be clear, doesn’t mean you agree on everything.”
For Canada, this is about reducing its dependency on the United States both economically and in terms of security. Europe’s debt-funded expansion of military budgets could serve a similar purpose if the money is spent on European weapons rather than American ones.
Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues that Trump’s threat to the global order is such that derisking and diversification are not enough. He believes that Europe, China and the rest of the world should come together to recognise that they don’t need the US, its technology, universities or even its market.
“A hegemon that abuses its power and bullies others must be left in its own corner. Resisting this new imperialism is essential for everyone else’s peace and prosperity. While the rest of the world should hope for the best, it must plan for the worst; and in planning for the worst, there may be no alternative to economic and social ostracism – no recourse but a policy of containment,” he wrote in Project Syndicate last week.
Even if the world chooses not to ostracise the US, Trump’s withdrawal from dozens of multilateral organisations means that if the international system is to survive, much of it will have to operate without American involvement. International relations expert Amitav Acharya believes that, instead of accelerating the rise of a more multipolar order, Trump is ushering in “the world minus one”, which does not include Washington.
“The United States will remain the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world for several more years. But it will be absent from, if not actively hostile toward, the existing international order,” he wrote in Foreign Policy this month.
He points out that a number of international bodies such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Paris Agreement on climate change and the International Criminal Court (ICC) show how multilateral institutions and agreements can survive when the United States is absent, noncompliant or even actively hostile. And he says the rise of groups such as the Brics shows that states are finding new ways to co-operate that don’t undermine the centrality of the UN to the global order.
“Washington will find itself living in a more broadly decentralized system, one shaped less by US power or purpose than that of other great and middle powers enmeshed in a web of economic and security ties,” Acharya writes.
“By the time the United States is ready to return to multilateralism, the world will have moved on. It could be that Washington’s only choice will be to rejoin the international order as a weaker entity on more equal terms.”
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