Next week, Donald Trump will take up residence in the White House once again. A few months from now, the world’s most powerful man may have undone some of the major progress made by a world order based on rules that have been developed since 1945 and which underpin the European Union.
The multilateral system will have to take whatever the 47th American president throws at it. The current paralysis of the UN, a permanent member of the Security Council of which has been engaged in military aggression against its neighbour since February 2022, will be used as a pretext further to weaken the UN system. As ridiculous as it may seem to Europeans, who tend to respect the territorial integrity of their neighbours, the way he has been eyeing up Greenland and Canada could be a sign of future tectonics, based on geopolitical plates, inherited from the 20th century and driven largely by the country Donald Trump will be leading once again.
This climate sceptic real estate magnate is expected to bring the United States out of the Climate Agreement, as he did in June 2017 (see EUROPE 11801/7), while forest fires are laying waste to California. With a conspiracy-theorist and openly anti-vaccine American Secretary of State for Health, fresh tensions between the United States and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are likely.
Commercial insularity or stand-off with his traditional partners to force them to buy ‘American’, Donald Trump will shed few tears over the economic struggles of the traditional allies of the United States. Like his predecessor, he is unlikely to come to the rescue of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), preferring instead to defend specific American interests in the framework of bilateral transactions.
The French President, Emmanuel Macron, seems to have taken note of this attitude already when, in early January, he addressed a group of French ambassadors, questioning whether it was in the EU’s interests to continue being the only one to comply with the multilateral trade rules. “When the WTO rules are no longer being obeyed by China or the United States of America, we [Europeans: Ed] will continue to obey them, but we will be the only ones who will. This will not work”, he said.
With the American Chamber of Representatives having just voted in favour of punishments for anybody contributing to the efforts of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against individuals ‘protected’ by the United States, Donald Trump is expected to step up his attacks on this important international jurisdiction of which the USA are not part, to the benefit of wanted criminals.
Within the EU, there has been a striking range of reactions from the member states to the arrest warrants put out by the ICC for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, and a presumed dead Islamist Hamas leader, Mohammed Deif, despite the calls upon the Twenty-Seven from the previous High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, and now from his successor, Kaja Kallas, to abide by their obligations under international law. Never one to shy away from controversy, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, went as far as to invite Mr Netanyahu to Budapest. France’s position is ambiguous, with Paris reporting a conflict between its obligations to the ICC and the immunity enjoyed by the leader of a country that is not a party to the Rome Statute. The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said that no Israeli leader would be troubled during the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of January.
You can feel it in the air: the risk that the multilateral system is about to come crashing down runs counter to the European vision of managing international challenges through cooperation and respect for rules and principles we used to think universal and intangible. Will the 21st century be the century when we return to the law of the jungle?
When she took up her place at the European Council in December, Ms Kallas herself referred to a “fight between the forces who want a world order in which ‘might is right’” and, in the opposite corner, the European Union and its allies who favour respect for the rule of law and fundamental values. She was referring to the attacks on Ukraine by Russia, cheered on by Iran and North Korea.
To echo Macron’s words, the European Union is a herbivore in an increasingly carnivorous world and risks bearing the brunt of a new world order shaped by permanent power struggles and in which modern communication technologies can reawaken primitive instincts.
It is not going to be enough for it to warn that the advent of the law of the jungle will lead to more violence and destruction of the planet and those who live on it. If the EU refuses to be ousted by one of its historical allies or to suffer the slow, agonising economic death feared by Mario Draghi, the Twenty-Seven really have no choice but to move forward, to ensure that the EU has the resources it needs to defend its model. We saw it with the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis: when danger looms, the Twenty-Seven are capable of coming together to face it head on, even though it might take a while to make bold decisions.
We can only hope that the rot hasn’t already set in...
Mathieu Bion