The dismantling of the old world order

As someone who writes occasionally about politics—sometimes despairingly, sometimes with a sense of hope—I don’t think it is possible to start my first column of 2026 without acknowledging, at the very least, the current state of world affairs.

To say that the unwritten, but widely accepted, theoretical contract that bound what is often referred to as the ‘West’ (meaning Europe and North America, along with Australia and New Zealand) has been torn up and flung to the four winds is to stray into a form of ironical understatement. In a few short months, we have seen all the ideals, and common ideas, that kept us unified, in spite of the many things that divide us, thrown away by a US president who appears to have no guiding principle other than that of narrow self interest. This is not a matter of diplomatic style, but a rupture.

It is not as if Donald Trump is acting in the interests of his own country or country folk. On every measure, both domestic and international, the position of the USA has been reduced. He has put the country at an economic disadvantage, and a political one too, by showing an utter disregard for allies that may indeed rely on the US more than it relies on them but nonetheless have stuck by the country through thick and thin in an attempt, no matter how misguided, to create an world in which trade and interconnectedness were intended to act as a bulwark against the constant human drift towards suspicion and, ultimately, conflict.

Here is a man who has consistently professed a hatred of war and senseless killing. In practice, however, his record tells a very different story. He has pursued an illegal (you may prefer the slightly more slippery term ‘extralegal’) killing spree in the waters off the Venezuelan coast that culminated in the equally illegal removal of a sitting president. Now he has set his sights on the annexing of Greenland, a territory belonging to a stanch NATO ally; leading to the extraordinary sight of European politicians lining up to punish the US for acting in ways that would not look out of place on the CV of Vladimir Putin or, dare I say it, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet here we are. Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada, articulated it very clearly at Davos this week when he said that we all have to stop pretending that the old “rules-based order” has any currency anymore. It has been made a lie by a US president who cares nothing for rules, and has openly expressed that the only limit on his actions is his own morality. He openly mocks the leaders of partner countries, and threatens them the moment that they dare to suggest that they don’t agree with what he is doing. (Yes, he may have rowed back on some of his more extreme suggestions on how to take Greenland under US influence, but the principle, or lack of, remains.)

But there is no use in complaining. It is clear, and something that President Emmanuel Macron of France has acknowledged, that elected politicians have no sway over Trump, but big business, and in particular the tech giants, do to a certain extent. So we are left with Europe’s so-called ‘trade bazooka’ that could, if not stop him in his tracks then, at least give the US president some pause for thought by threatening the profits of the social media companies that depend on European consumers.

While it is all rather shocking to see the ties that bind the Western world degenerate to such an extent in such a short time, all it has done is confirm a rather long-held view of mine, and one shared by an increasing number of people, that European needs to detach itself both from the US and from the sphere of Russian influence and create a kind of military and energy-based sovereignty. The latter is being actively pursued across the continent, not least by Austria, and the former was an idea once ridiculed as the preserve of pro-EU extremists but is now swinging firmly into the mainstream. Not is not about isolationism, far from it, but resilience.

This idea of European sovereignty started to take hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, when the potential drawbacks of a vastly intertwined global supply network centered on the factories of China were exposed with a lethal brutality. It is clear, however, that the idea cannot, and must not, be restricted to manufacturing but, with the betrayal of decades of entente and formal agreements with the US, be extended out into all areas of international trade and cooperation.

(I would like to stress here that I do not see ‘European sovereignty’ as being something exclusively focused on the EU, but rather to include all countries in the EEA and the wider European region, including Turkey, which I believe we should try to keep in our sphere rather than in the fluid international space it currently occupies. It is also crucial, as Mark Carney has repeatedly stressed, that we strengthen our ties with Canada, as well as with Australia and New Zealand, with East Asia, and with Central and South America and Africa. These latter regions cannot be left to slip further into an unequal, if highly tempting, set of arrangements with China in which they bargain away their resources to yet another colonising power that, instead of the barrel of a gun, uses debt as its means of coercion.)

So far, I have avoided saying how I think the UK should act. The opportunity to argue for membership of the EU is always there, but I have seen under Sir Keir Starmer that the country is able to steer a path of deep cooperation and, dare I say it, fraternity with our closest neighbours and, as it turns out, our closet allies. The important thing for us to do in these troubled times is to stay united. If the spectre of the US trying to unilaterally take the territory of a trusted and important NATO and EU partner is what it takes to show us that, then perhaps the dark clouds resulting from the reckless actions of an untethered president can have a silver lining after all.