If there were job ads inviting nation states to apply for work, it is not hard to guess which post would top the world’s search list, 100 days into Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
“Help wanted,” the ad would read. “Leader of the free world.”
President Trump has delivered a series of hammer blows to an international order that America largely built, buttressed, and led in the decades after World War II. Its dominant influence ranged from trade, through defense, to economic development and, more often than not, to the promotion of democracy and human rights.
Why We Wrote This
As Washington abandons its traditional leadership of the international order, other countries are trying to attract its attention with tempting business deals.
In place of the American “exceptionalism” embraced for years by presidents of both parties, Mr. Trump has positioned the United States as a lone wolf: still the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country, but shedding commitments and relationships that do not directly serve its own political and economic interests.
“About time!” has been the response from two very different constituencies: domestic supporters of his “America first” message, and Washington’s principal rivals overseas, China and Russia.
They have long bristled at America’s outsized international footprint, pushing instead for a multipolar world in which they would share influence with Washington.
But America’s allies and trading partners have been shocked by the extent and speed of the change. They are now scrambling for a way to avoid a definitive break with Washington, salvage what they can of pre-Trump ties, and adapt to a new world.
Some still hope Mr. Trump will moderate aspects of his new vision. Yet many feel that a profound and irreversible shift has already occurred.
Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
“It’s over,” declared Mark Carney, prime minister of America’s neighbor and ally Canada, this week after he rode anti-Trump sentiment to an election victory.
“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States … is over.”
As U.S. allies move to minimize the impact, a pattern is emerging in their approach. Their main thrust, not just on trade, but in security and defense, too, is to make a hard-nosed business case for U.S. involvement and support.
Ukraine this week signed a deal that would give the U.S. a major share in future revenues from its natural resources. Though Ukraine has failed in its effort to obtain explicit security guarantees in return, its hope is that getting “payback” for America’s wartime military support will induce Mr. Trump to maintain this assistance in some form.
So, too, the Iranians, with whom Mr. Trump’s envoy held a fourth round of nuclear talks over the weekend. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi held out the prospect of a “trillion dollar opportunity” for American companies if Washington signed a deal.
In Congo, where rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda have occupied a border area, U.S. mediators last week convinced both countries to agree in principle to seek a peace deal. This came after Congo proposed giving U.S. companies mining rights to plentiful rare-earth deposits, so far dominated by Chinese companies.
Even if such “pay to play” deals become more widespread, America’s decades-old leadership role in a rules-based system of world trade and politics may well be gone for good.
Mr. Trump’s administration has moved to dismantle tools of U.S. soft power such as U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s major player in emergency relief, development, and public health, and Voice of America, which has long broadcast uncensored news into authoritarian countries.
Other values-based priorities, such as human rights, are being downplayed as too “woke” in plans for a reorganization of the State Department.
So, too, the commitment to widely accepted principles of international law.
European allies have been shaken by a provision in the U.S. peace plan for Ukraine by which Washington would formally recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. That is a violation of the post-World War II consensus against the forceful seizure of another country’s land, a foundational principle of the United Nations that has kept even China from extending recognition.
The main question with which U.S. allies are now grappling is how they might fill an America-sized void on the world’s economic and political stage.
Ukraine is a case in point: NATO and European Union allies have been moving to increase their economic and military support in the hope of giving Ukraine sufficient leverage to deter the U.S. from adopting overly Russia-friendly terms for a cease-fire.
Still, they do not have large enough arms industries to fully make up for a withdrawal of U.S. support.
Shoring up trade and supply chains among free-market economies could prove equally tricky, given the swerve by the largest of them all, America, towards tariffs instead.
The EU has been seeking new trade agreements in South America and Asia. So, too, has Britain, which left the union five years ago.
Canada has also been moving to broaden its trade ties.
Prime Minister Carney – a newcomer to front-line politics who has led the central banks of both Canada and Britain – has been reaching out to other major free-market economies in hopes of forging a renewed commitment to free trade.
It is being dubbed a new “coalition of the willing.”
In telling supporters on election night that the old Canada-U.S. relationship, and the American-led “system of open global trade” were both now over, he added: “These are tragedies. But it’s also our new reality.”
