A breakdown of the post-war global Western alliance

Everybody’s talking about this video of G-7 leaders laughing at US President Donald Trump during the recent NATO summit. While most people are just giggling about it, I think it reflects a much deeper issue. Take a look.

.@JustinTrudeau, @EmmanuelMacron, @BorisJohnson and other VIPs shared a few words at a Buckingham Palace reception Tuesday. No one mentions @realDonaldTrump by name, but they seem to be discussing his lengthy impromptu press conferences from earlier in the day. (Video: Host Pool) pic.twitter.com/dVgj48rpOP

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) December 3, 2019

Will they be laughing if Trump is re-elected next November for another four years? I doubt it. Likely, they will be looking for ways to reduce dependence on the US, severing the post-World War 2 alliances perhaps irrevocably. Some thoughts below

Trump as a laughing stock

I thought this analysis of the mocking of Trump at the NATO summit and the conclusion were interesting.

This video of other world leaders mocking Trump behind his back is funny, but also very important:

It suggests the rest of the world no longer feels the need to take Trump seriously anymore. https://t.co/fld2UQGm0w

— Jim Edwards (@Jim_Edwards) December 4, 2019

The word ‘seriously’ stands out here. And for me what ‘seriously’ means in context is that other world leaders now often disregard Trump’s ideas snd statements as something to get behind and support for the sake of existing Western alliances. I think they take him seriously. After all, Donald Trump is the President of the world’s largest economy with command over the world’s most lethal military force. He has to be taken seriously…ALWAYS.

But, the term ‘seriously’ in this context is a shorthand way of saying ‘faithful and dependable ally, whose views are worthy of wide-scale adoption’. What the video shows is America’s most ‘trusted’ allies – the UK, Canada, France and the Netherlands – coming together for a laugh about the President of the United States as if it is commonly-accepted wisdom amongst US allies that he is worthy of derision. Indeed, this video makes plain that Trump is a laughing stock amongst some (and probably many) Western leaders.

Question: would we ever catch Angela Merkel laughing at Trump this way? I don’t think so. She believes in respect and decorum too much for that. But, by the same token, I think Merkel shares the view behind the derisive laughter: that Trump can no longer be placated, that other Western leaders need to find a way to diminish their reliance on the US.

De-coupling

Now, if you are an economic nationalist who believes the US is paying more than its fair share for the defense of the Western economic and military alliance, then this de-coupling is welcome. You might balk at how it’s playing out, but the end goal where it’s every nation for itself is welcome.

But this de-coupling is fraught with peril. It’s not just NATO here; we’re talking about an unraveling of the existing world order. For example, there’s this tidbit from Bloomberg’s Terms of Trade newsletter on the WTO:

Things are getting ugly at the World Trade Organization and a soap opera-like atmosphere has descended on the normally staid institution on the shores of Lake Geneva.

An internal war is raging among the members and the director of the WTO appellate body who have begun airing their dirty laundry in public. This is a panel that mediates disagreements between countries involving billions of dollars in international commerce, and it’s been at the heart of calls for reform from the Trump administration.

In recent weeks the chairman of the appellate committee, Thomas Graham, has called for the removalof the division director, Werner Zdouc, a 56-year-old Austrian who has become a lightning rod of criticism for the institution’s dispute settlement system.

That sparked Graham’s colleagues to write a letter in which they rejected allegations about Zdouc’s “competence and neutrality” and pushed back on allegations that they supported Graham’s call to remove Zdouc from office.

On Wednesday, a senior trade official sought to clarify the matter. The official told Bloomberg that Graham’s colleagues did not share his desire to oust Zdouc — unless — all 164 WTO member nations supported such a move, which they do not.

The official said members may consider Zdouc’s removal in the context of a bigger package of WTO reforms, but those conversations are still very preliminary. In the meantime, Director-General Roberto Azevedo has no plans to interfere with the work of the appellate body, which is supposed be independent, the official said.

The whole fight could be moot anyhow.

Next week the WTO appellate body won’t have enough active members to rule on new cases. That means the world’s trade referee will cease to function properly at the very moment when it’s needed most.

—Bryce Baschuk in Geneva

If Trump wins re-election, organizations like the World Trade Organization will not play an important role. Nor will the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They will all become obsolete as each country fights for its own economic and geopolitical benefit.

A United Europe

I spoke to trade and foreign policy expert Alan Tonelson about this a couple of weeks ago. The video will be up on Real Vision tomorrow. He is an economic nationalist who welcomes change because it would allow the US to seek trade and foreign policy terms that best match its narrow longer-term goals. His view is that the US has been sublimating those goals at the expense of economic vitality, and that this needs to end.

My view is that following this path necessarily means a more ‘United Europe’. As Alan put it, the European Union as a collective is the largest economy in the world. But, as individual countries, EU member states are minnows compared to the US. Even the EU’s largest economy, Germany, is less than a fourth the size of the US. They can’t compete alone in a world of economic nationalism. So they will be forced closer together. That’s my analysis.

And as they are forced closer together, they will start to adopt positions and strategies that are in opposition to the United States. In the past, Europe has also sublimated its longer-term interests for sake of alliance. This is particularly true in terms of financial dependence on the US dollar and the power it gives the US over other countries when using economic sanctions as a weapon or penalizing so-called bad actors like BNP Paribas, which was sentenced in $8.9 billion accord over sanctions violations in 2015.

In the new world order, it won’t strictly be every nation for itself. Alliances will build. And, since the US already has the best alliance partners now, it can only lose clout as these alliances are re-formed. The question then becomes whether the benefits the United States extracts will outweigh the losses. Personally, I doubt they will. But, if Trump wins a second term, we are likely to find out, because the die will then be cast for de-coupling. The Europeans won’t be laughing then. They will be scheming. And the existing world order will be in tatters.