As Trump Bullies, Other Countries Are Moving On

A post-American order means without the U.S., not challenging the U.S.

Photo by Tim Kuhn on Unsplash

U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy has been characterized by big, splashy announcements and a lack of follow-through. Last week, in what was reported as a turnabout in his friendly posture towards Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he announced a new plan for European countries to buy U.S. weapons and Patriot missile defense systems for Ukraine. However, Berlin later denied Trump's claim that Patriot systems owned by Germany were en route to Ukraine and Trump later downplayed the possibility of sending long-range missiles to Kyiv. Last month, he flew to Brussels to take part in the annual NATO Summit, where he announced that he had gotten members of the mutual-defense pact to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense. However, the new number was actually 1.5 percentage points less, and it wasn't legally binding. (For example, Spain got an exemption to spend 2 percent of its budget, the old target.)

However, other NATO countries, sensing that U.S. security guarantees are at the whim of an impulsive leader, are taking the opposite approach to Trump: they are making substantive agreements that don't generate big headlines. NATO relies on U.S. command-and-control structures; European members cannot count on mutual defense if the U.S. does not agree to defend them. On July 10, the U.K. and France announced an agreement that, for the first time in history, they would coordinate their use of nuclear weapons. While the joint statement seemed like dry diplomatic language, it was actually a big step. For example, the declaration means that Paris and London could coordinate intelligence and assist each other with submarine patrols as a deterrent to Vladimir Putin's Russia -- all without Washington's help. On July 17, the U.K. and Germany announced a bilateral defense pact, their first since 1945. The pact extends London's nuclear umbrella to Berlin; German defense officials have warned that Russia could attack a NATO country by 2029. (Additionally, on July 18, the EU passed its 18th sanctions package against Russia, while Trump has delayed tariffs and possible sanctions against Putin for 50 days.)

These agreements won't -- and aren't designed to -- replace NATO, but they are the latest signs of a world order that is shifting away from the U.S. This trend is not so much new as it is accelerated: CNN host Fareed Zakaria's 2008 book The Post-American World argued that middle powers were rising to challenge U.S. domination, but that the U.S. was not in decline. Now, with Trump's abject foreign bullying as well as his domestic program of cancelling funds for medical, scientific, and environmental innovation, he is birthing a new world order where the U.S. is both in decline and left out. 

Other countries are trying to forge connections amid Trump detonating TNT to the American-led order.