The French president Emmanuel Macron borrowed some lines from Hugh Grant about bullies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. His target was Donald Trump, who had leaked a conciliatory text message from Macron who, evidently, was trying to get the US president to the table to shore up the rapidly disintegrating global order.
In the love-it-or-hate-it Christmas film Love Actually, Grant – playing the foppish British prime minister of the day – confronts the US president, saying: “A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend, and since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger.”
We are now in an era where truth is stranger than fiction, if you can find the truth at all.
Macron’s text message was about Greenland, which has been at the centre of a classic Trumpian play to use his position to provoke a reaction thereby illustrating his power. His threat to impose tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland because of their opposition to American control of Greenland achieved its aim.
Europe scrambled to respond, considering retaliatory tariffs, increased customs duties and limiting or blocking access to US goods, services or companies. Troops were sent to Greenland.
Trump then cited a vague “deal” with Nato and dropped the tariffs.
“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said, before adding: “But I won’t do that.”
Right. As you were then.
But let’s be honest: had he acted on his threats on Greenland – either economic or military – who could have stopped him?
We can no longer pretend. The global order is built on trust. The United States, under Donald Trump, cannot be trusted. And removing that lynchpin from the global order is a catastrophe.
As Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, said in his watershed speech at Davos, “the old order is not coming back”.
It’s notable that this speech has received so much attention when all Carney did was state the obvious.
Trump’s actions in the northern hemisphere are highly relevant to Australia, and they represent more than flexing.
As I wrote here last March, the Atlantic alliance, which has protected peace in western Europe for almost 80 years (albeit imperfectly) is evaporating before our eye. It’s deluded not to think this has profound and alarming implications for Australia.
Arguably events in Ukraine and Gaza over the last few years have been part of the ruination of the rules-based order that has been in fragile existence since the second world war. The rules of war and humanitarian and democratic principles have been variously ignored by Putin, Netanyahu and most recently the Trump administration in Venezuela. The boundaries are very frayed.
In this, Trump has form.
He’s been shifting boundaries inexorably since he first entered the presidential race in 2015, testing tolerances and controlling and rebuilding the information landscape in such a way that ever more unprecedented actions become accepted even if they had not been expected.
It’s the new normal. From a values and principles point of view, this leaves Australia marooned.
With our closest ally threatening other allies with no regard for rules, systems, protocol, ethics or consequences our defence, security, information, technology and economic systems are so intertwined that disentangling them appears at worst impossible, at best extraordinarily complicated.
And what of our own alliance with America? What is the value of Aukus, which to date is making us a greater first-strike target while we shovel billions of dollars to Trump, just as he ditches article 5 of the Nato pact without so much as a flick of the wrist?
Reports that Canada has modelled a hypothetical US invasion may seem wild, but as Carney said, his nation was amongst “the first to hear the wake-up call” that historic alliances are no longer guaranteed.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said.
Agree with it or not, he is walking the talk, cutting a trade deal with China – and saying in its defence: “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
In other words, hope is not a strategy.
Trump’s buddy Steve Bannon conducted an apparent strategic intervention on behalf of the Maga brigade, according to reports this week, saying Australia’s response to Covid meant our image was damaged among Trump supporters.
“People in your country should understand you went from beloved to kind of shot,” he said, with breathtaking lack of self-awareness.
It cuts both ways. And Australia can’t expect to fall back on mateship under Trump.
-
Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein. She is the chair of Mental Health Victoria
