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Your guide to what the 2024 American elections mean for Washington and the world
The writer is a contributing contributor to ft
Canada’s Mark Carney has chosen Gauntlet. Britain’s Keir Starmer prefers to look the other side. Japan and South Korea lead the queue to hit a bilateral deal. Atlantic Germany states that Europe should only go it. As much as America’s old friends are enraged by Donald Trump’s destruction for the international Liberal order, they change how to answer better. We need to be careful to take the sides – the pugilists and pacifists both have a point.
Kudos generally goes to those who are willing to stand ahead of “Bully”. Carney has transformed the electoral prospects of his liberal party enjoying the war. In Europe, Gaullism has gone to the forefront. Emmanuel Macron’s call for Europe to break away from Americans has been echoed by the Chancellor waiting for Friedrich Merz in Berlin. Trump’s admirers in populist law such as Nigel Farage have been destabilized.
There are no plaudits to silence, Starmer has revealed. As a guardian of Britain’s overloaded special relationship with the US, the prime minister has walked the good line of separating opposition to Trump’s policies from any ad hominem attack on the president. He has done this with some skills, working with Macron to create a new peacekeeping coalition to support Ukraine and Britain’s return after Brexit to the heart of European security. European support for Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s aggression has put a brake, at least, with Trump’s impatience to force this to undergo.
Tariffs, Chaos of White House tariffs over the past two weeks also suggests that there is something to say about keeping Starmer in trade revenge. At one point, Trump’s policies can collapse under the weight of their contradictions. Over time, the White House will learn that American customers want to buy all those foreign imports. Avoiding anger of the White House, meanwhile, is not a bad strategy.
Of course, the United Kingdom has more to lose than most of Trump’s Bellicose unilateralism. Its armed forces are almost entirely formed by the assumption that in every serious war it would fight alongside Americans. She needs SH.BA to keep her nuclear missiles in service. Cut from Brexit from its largest market, can barely allow a collapse in exports to the SH.BA
Japan and South Korea, also in the camp “quietly violates and make it an offer”, share a similar addiction that includes national security and the economy. They are housed under the American nuclear umbrella. China’s ambitions for regional hegemony leave them vulnerable to “can be” right “to Global issues supported by Trump. After all, if the US claims the right to run the western hemisphere, who means Xi Jinping should not impose China’s will in Western Pacific?
None of this makes Pandering to Trump to look heroic, especially when, with characteristic vulgarity, the president is publicly spoken publicly spoken. Opinion surveys suggest that Europeans will prefer their leaders to join Carney in the ring. Trump attractive can simply encourage it. He clearly enjoys the old humiliating friends of America. The answer is certainly to tell him that Trumpism has costs. Didn’t we learn in school that the way to beat the harassers is to fight again?
However, there is something more about different answers than changes in national interests, tactical preferences or different political temperaments. As it happens, subscribers and revenge have both rights. They simply operate at different times. America’s allies must break their dependence from Washington. But they can’t do this very quickly.
Pax americana is over. Everyone else happens, the US has proven itself an unreliable ally in an increasingly dangerous world. Other advanced democracies have no opportunity than to establish defensive skills and establish new economic relations. A radical de-rating of the relationship to establish a course for what Macron calls strategic autonomy is a must.
Also the work of generations. Economic and security dependence cannot be desired overnight. In the short term, the advantage should be the limitation of inevitable pain. If the US plans to withdraw from its global responsibilities, the first allies need time before taking them. Trump has shown that he has no interest in a fair result in Ukraine. But Europe has no interest in rushing the speed of American attraction of all support for KyIw. It will take decades for European nations to rebuild their military.
The best agreements with a US capricious president may seem like a humiliation. And of course there should be no excuse to delay others’ efforts to stand at their feet. But the order led by the US was 80 years in doing. It will be a long farewell.
