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View all search resultsResisting a Trump world order
Just blaming Trump for the United States' betrayal of itself is too glib an explanation for the transformation that has taken place in the US.
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United States President Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after agreeing on a trade deal on July 27 between the two economies following their meeting, in Turnberry, south west Scotland, the United Kingdom. (AFP/Brendan Smiallowski)
T
he image of United States President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland was of no mere handshake sealing a trade deal. It was a symbol of the Trump administration’s historic rupture with US history and guiding principles, a rupture with profound consequences for the global economy and international security.
From Europe, it is strange to watch a country which, for 249 years, has loudly proclaimed its reliance on the concept of “we the people”, the opening words of the US Constitution, suddenly abandon faith in its own institutions as the country’s legitimately elected leader rapidly dismantles them.
But just blaming Trump for the US' betrayal of itself is too glib an explanation for the transformation that has taken place in the US. Something deeper and more disturbing is at work.
The US' contribution to the world was, beginning after World War I and with greater success after World War II, to build a world based on its own history. It sought core institutions, rules and norms that would allow the world to order itself in a predictable way.
President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 Points, issued in January 1918, the final year of WWI, can be considered the birth certificate for the ideas that shaped the post-WWII era, including point 14: “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
Large and small states should respect each other’s political independence and territorial integrity. But today, that fundamental principle no longer seems to be accepted. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine wounded it gravely, but Trump’s public refusal to rule out using force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal may have delivered the mortal blow. Likewise, Trump’s weaponization of trade tariffs against Brazil as punishment for its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro betrays Trump’s lack of respect for Brazil’s political independence.
The trade deal between the US and the European Union goes even further. It abandons rules all together.
