Is the American era officially over?
A “rupture” in the world order. That declaration last week from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was more than a criticism of President Donald Trump’s recent elbow-throwing on the global stage. To many observers, it was a eulogy for the age of American preeminence.
The world is “witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower” via Trump’s trade wars and territorial aggressiveness, said Garrett M. Graff at Wired. “The old order is not coming back,” Carney declared in Switzerland. That speech, along with America’s European allies drawing a red line against Trump’s designs on Greenland, will likely “someday be seen as heralding the official end” of the American-led world order that has been in place since the end of World War II, Graff said. It is rare to see a nation “so thoroughly set about consciously dismantling its core sources of national strength and influence” as the U.S. president has by alienating America’s longtime friends over Greenland. “This is the end of the world as we have known it for 80 years.”
Dismantling the West?
Trump is abandoning the “traditional foundations of U.S. influence,” said Joschka Fischer, the former German vice chancellor, at Project Syndicate. The United States ended World War II as the “principal victor in both the European and Pacific theaters,” then went on to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Now, though, European countries that have been “friends and allies for eight decades” are being portrayed as “adversaries” by the White House. As a result, Trump has “effectively dismantled the transatlantic West.”
“It’s over,” said David French at The New York Times. Carney’s assertion that the American order has been ruptured might “seem bracing and perhaps even premature.” But it is correct. Europe and Canada have little choice but to back away from American leadership and band together for security and defense arrangements. Trumpists may think “we’ll no longer be exploited by freeloading allies,” but it raises a question: “How does engineering enmity with some of the most prosperous nations in the world guarantee American prosperity?”
The president is “catalyzing a new world order,” said Noah Rothman at the National Review. The way he is doing so is damaging to American interests and “diminishing our own influence” over what comes next. Canada just struck a new trade deal with China, showing “Carney is serious” about reorienting his country away from American influence. “Perhaps other NATO members will follow his lead.”
Looking ahead, and away
The U.S. remains “globally influential and will continue to matter,” said Timothy Garton Ash and his colleagues at the European Council on Foreign Relations. But few observers expect the U.S. to “gain in influence” going forward, and world leaders are looking ahead and away from American leadership. It is a “wicked challenge” for Europe to wean itself from U.S. power, John Thornhill said at the Financial Times. There is no choice. “Thanks, Donald, Europe will take it from here.”