Even now – after Donald Trump and his acolytes have violated the constitution of the United States, insulted and bullied America’s allies, openly praised Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Ukraine, and vilified the heroic Volodymyr Zelensky – the orgy of vandalism grinds on.
The latest voting at the United Nations sees the United States of America, that “shining city on a hill”, as Ronald Reagan memorably styled it, now siding with the most tyrannical of regimes, Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China and Iran hedged their bets.
Usually, the annual resolution condemning Russian aggression in ringing terms passes the General Assembly and the Security Council as a grim formality. In the first years after the Russian invasion, it served to remind the world of the brutality of the unprovoked invasion, the bestiality of the crimes committed by President Putin’s troops, and the need for allies to stand resolute against his tyranny.
But this year, it was an outward and visible signal of the tragedy that has befallen America, and has seen the US side with a new axis of evil.
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As the former deputy prime minister, Michael Heseltine, told The Independent: “We have relied on American support, which enabled us to defeat the fascists in the 1940s and saw the rehabilitation of democracy in the post-war Atlantic alliance. It has now thrown an incentive not to peacekeepers, but to those who threaten the stability of the modern world.”
It is a moment – a turning point that has to be faced up to in all its enormity.
Sir Keir Starmer told the House of Commons that he will hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 – with a longer-term target of 3 per cent by 2034 – in order to counter “tyrants” like Putin, who “only respond to strength”.
The German chancellor-in-waiting is similarly clear-sighted about the mounting threat. Friedrich Merz has warned that the free world should harbour “absolutely no illusions” about President Trump, who “pretty much no longer cares about the fate of Europe”, so much so that it is “unclear whether we will still speak of Nato in its present shape” by the summer.
Europeans can no longer assume America has got their backs, and that it will always be with them. Indeed, America’s friends and allies all around the world, threatened with tariffs and the withdrawal of military guarantees, also find themselves in an unfamiliar and dangerous position.
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Canada is an egregious example of this. The two nations are friends and neighbours who’ve fought together in two world wars, bound by close family and business links. Yet Donald Trump now chooses to destroy everything. His latest proposal, agreed with Vladimir Putin, is that Russia should export large quantities of aluminium to the US – at the same time as a large import tax is being imposed on supplies from Canada. As if his menacing remarks about making Canada the 51st state were not enough, he adds economic injury to diplomatic insults.
Rather than be the world’s policeman, America is becoming something of a renegade itself, with Mr Trump, incredibly, thinking aloud not just about annexing Canada, but annexing the Panama Canal, Greenland and, most bizarre and inhumane of all, expelling Palestinians from Gaza to turn it into a beach resort/colonial possession. The proposal is so outlandish it is too much for Benjamin Netanyahu to digest. The Trump presidency is nightmarish, but all too real – and it has only just begun.
The immediate concern, the new, terrifying reality, is that America has switched sides on Ukraine, unmistakeably and in a way few saw coming. The realignment is even more profound than that. The institutions and values that framed world affairs are being degraded or denounced by Mr Trump and his gang of under-qualified cronies, just as those in the US are – the independence of the courts, freedom of the press, Congressional control and the rule of law.
America’s leadership role in the rules-based world order is being renounced in favour of “might is right”. This is much worse than previous episodes of American isolationism in the past, because this time round the Trump White House seeks a new, normalised relationship with the most dangerous nation on earth, and is developing a taste for expansion of its own.
It is as if Franklin D Roosevelt in 1940 sought out a collaborative friendship with Adolf Hitler, and let him do whatever the hell he wanted with Britain. When Sir Keir finds himself in the Oval Office with President Trump, he might like to nod towards the bust of Winston Churchill as an oblique reminder of Churchill’s words about the Atlantic Alliance, when “the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old”.
Then, as now, it will always be the right thing – and it is in America’s own self-interest to keep Europe free, prosperous and strong.
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