Winston Churchill told a story of an 1895 encounter, as a young cavalry officer, with the statesman William Harcourt. After some discussion of great issues, Churchill asked eagerly: “What will happen then?” Harcourt replied, with Victorian complacency: “My dear Winston, the experiences of a long life have convinced me that nothing ever happens.”
Few people 130 years later could succumb to any similar delusion in a world that seems to have consigned itself to perpetual turmoil. Most recently, Poland has frightened European capitals by electing a right-wing, anti-European Union president. The British government published a long-awaited strategic defense review, which proposes rearmament to bring about “war-fighting readiness,” according to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as Ukraine launched stunning drone strikes against five bomber bases deep inside Russia.
There is more. At a conference in Singapore last weekend, France’s president warned of dire consequences for democracies if Russia prevails in Ukraine. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urged Asian nations to stand tall against Chinese aggression as Australia’s defense minister challenged China to justify its huge military and naval buildup. His Philippine counterpart said China has been “absolutely irresponsible and reckless in appropriating most, if not all of the South China Sea, and the world cannot tolerate this.”
These various words were uttered, those events took place, many thousands of miles apart. But the common strand is fear that the threat of major conflict among nations is growing, that the international rules-based order has collapsed.
Let us first review some of the stuff said in Singapore. Washington sought to message Asian nations that it is time to pick a side — to fall in behind the US to confront the rising menace from China not only against Taiwan, but against national sovereignties across the region. Unfortunately, it’s hard for Donald Trump to rally Asian nations to military solidarity, while waging a trade war against most.
“By assailing interdependence,” Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane write in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “he undercuts the very foundation of American power.” Moreover, there are concerns that Trump might suddenly spring a deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un involving a major US withdrawal from South Korea. For the purposes of this essay, it is unimportant whether Washington really is close to offering Kim an olive branch. What matters is that the fear of such a traumatic upheaval exists, in Seoul and elsewhere. There is little incentive to join an Asian-Pacific security pact, as some strategic gurus propose, when the US administration is capable of tearing up any deal a week after signing.
Among the few countries willing to hang in with Trump is Australia. Although outraged by his lunges into tariffs, the Australians remain more clearly aligned than any other country in the region, chiefly because of aggressive Chinese initiatives against themselves. Canberra has invested big political capital in the Aukus pact with Britain and the US. Aukus calls for the three countries to build and deploy a fleet of nuclear submarines Down Under. While it will be years before this comes to reality, the Australians know that, even if they go to sleep for a decade, China will still be there when they wake up.
Meanwhile in Europe the same uncertainties about American intentions loom large. In every capital, the question hangs in the air: will Trump withdraw America from NATO, and US forces from Europe?
Some politicians draw comfort from the fact that, five months into this tumultuous presidency, Trump has given no sign that he intends to pull the plug. But suffusing the British strategic defense review, though nowhere articulated, is the same doubt pervading discussion in Singapore, about whether an American partnership can continue to be relied upon.
The UK’s intended message, supposedly to Moscow but really to Washington, is that the British are stepping up: that we are getting serious about rearmament, as Trump has long demanded. Unfortunately, Starmer has no plans to spend remotely the sort of money necessary to restore credibility to our shrunken armed forces.
A back-of-an-envelope guesstimate — informed by conversations with senior military — suggests that an immediate $30 billion would be needed. Nothing like that amount is on offer from a Treasury under desperate pressure for health and welfare funding. After years of profligacy — and rising interest rates — Britain now spends almost twice as much on debt interest as on defense.
Nonetheless, driven by fears both about what Russia could do next and about what the US may stop doing, Britain is participating in defense conversations with France, Germany, and the Nordic states. These are hampered by the fact that the southern Europeans and Hungary aren’t interested. They refuse to find money for more weapons. The Greeks, for instance, partly inspired by a shared commitment to the Orthodox Church, display notable sympathy for the Russian cause in Ukraine.
Thus there is disunity among NATO members. The Northerners know that, in forging realistic operational plans, they’ll have to go it alone. There can no longer be a solid front, such as existed in the Cold War. They also have a mountain to climb in rationalizing European arms procurement — with 29 different classes of warship, 17 types of tank, 20 different combat aircraft, and 17 artillery systems.
Common ground among all the European governments, however, is that we are living in a new world: The US no longer represents a rock such as anchored the West for so many decades, but more like sand, shifting underfoot.
In their essay, Nye and Keohane deplore the fact that Trump seems to understand only coercion as a tool to bend allies to his will. He ignores persuasion and the huge past importance of common beliefs and purposes — soft power.
In Singapore, the US defense secretary sought to brush aside discussion of tariffs, instead focusing exclusively on the need for increased arms spending. His audience wasn’t having this. The Malaysian prime minister savaged what he called “the onslaught of arbitrary imposition of trade restrictions.” In other words, America cannot credibly be a military friend and a trade enemy.
The equation is different in Europe. So desperate are governments to keep American forces on the continent that they are willing to endure barrages of insults, and indeed of tariffs, without risking an absolute breach with Washington. But it is hard to sustain alliances amid doubts about which side America is on, save its own.
Perhaps the most significant fact about Ukraine’s drone strike on Russian bomber bases is that Kyiv’s claim that it gave Washington no prior warnings seems plausible. The Administration simply couldn’t be relied upon to withhold this vital operational secret from Moscow. Many other nations feel the same way. The Trump administration’s conduct has destroyed trust, the most precious commodity among friends. This won’t readily be restored. — Bloomberg Opinion
