The cunning former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said, “A week is a long time in politics.”
If anything, he was guilty of understatement.
In the last week alone, US President Donald Trump’s statements about ownership of Greenland, the weakening of Europe, and his disdain for NATO allies’ contributions in Afghanistan have revealed the stark reality that the old order is dead and will not be revived.
Add in the Gaza Peace Committee, which includes the President of Belarus, and the invitation sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it’s been a strange week.
No one captured the mood better than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who infuriated President Trump in his speech at the Davos World Economic Forum on Wednesday.
“We are in the midst of a discontinuity, not a transition,” Carney said, calling on what he called the “middle powers” to rally.
“Even if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.
There are now signs of recognition in the West that open resistance is a better approach than a quiet response. In addition to anger over President Trump’s comments on Afghanistan, European countries were equally taken aback by President Trump’s threat to punish eight European countries with tariffs for supporting Greenland’s status quo as part of Denmark.
Europe threatened retaliatory tariffs. The European Parliament responded by freezing the EU-US trade agreement.
Britain, France, Germany and Italy all rejected President Trump’s invitation to join the peace commission, unwilling to be subordinate to him as chair.
After President Trump declared that the Russian leader had agreed to join the peace commission, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “clearly concerned about President Putin joining the peace commission.” Moscow has not confirmed it.
By Wednesday, President Trump had reversed his tariff threat and toned down his comments about the military occupation of Greenland.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “We have succeeded in not escalating and in holding firm.”
Then came the more difficult part.
“We know that we have to work harder and harder for an independent Europe,” she added.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever was even clearer.
“We chose to be generous because we were dependent on the United States, but now so many red lines have been crossed that we have to choose between our self-respect,” he said.
“If you back down now, you will lose your dignity. And perhaps the most precious thing in a democracy is your dignity.”
If Europe has learned anything, it’s that we’re probably weeks (or less) away from the next bout of transatlantic melodrama, whether it’s Greenland again, Ukraine, tariffs, or another area of President Trump’s focus.
“Immediate threats have been suspended and military options are off the table until they return,” said Grégoire Rouss, director of the Europe and Russia program at Chatham House.
Ruth argues that the real threat to Europe is American economic domination, symbolized by Europe’s dependence on imports of American natural gas.
“The EU remains structurally under pressure from its closest ally, and U.S. pressure can be applied in a variety of ways without exceeding the limits of force,” he said last week.
Whether European countries will show unity and urgency in response to this roller coaster is another question.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who also visited Switzerland last week, said he had not done so so far.
“Just last year, here in Davos, I ended my speech with these words: ‘Europe needs to know how to protect itself. Europe needs to know how to protect itself,'” Zelenskiy said, referring to the movie “Groundhog Day.” A year has passed and nothing has changed. ”
Not entirely true. Mick Ryan, a military analyst and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on his blog Futura Doctrina that “Europe changed significantly over the course of the war, increasing its military, economic and intelligence support to Ukraine.”
The European Union has built a formidable fund for Ukraine to buy weapons, extended billions of dollars in loans, and expanded its own military production, albeit from a very low base.
But EU decision-making is messy. When it comes to national defense and security issues, the participation of 27 governments is like chasing squirrels in the garden.
Europe “remains, at least nominally, committed to the values to which the old order aspired,” commentator Martin Sambou wrote in the Financial Times this weekend.
“It represents an order of how member states share sovereignty, but it will never serve as such a global anchor unless we take seriously the work that comes with it,” Sandve argued.
A 400-page blueprint already exists. Two years ago, Mario Draghi, a former Italian prime minister and fellow former central bank chief, wrote a report outlining Europe’s challenges, including massive investment in joint military forces, more agile decision-making and better use of innovation.
Noting that Europe’s workforce is expected to shrink by two million people a year by 2040, Draghi warned that “geopolitical stability is fading and our dependencies become vulnerabilities.”
Carney took Draghi’s assessment a step further, warning that the old rules-based order is crumbling before “great power competition intensifies and the most powerful use economic integration as a coercion to pursue their own interests.”
“Nostalgia is not a strategy, but I believe we can build something bigger, better, stronger and more just out of this destruction,” the Canadian prime minister said at the end of his Davos speech, drawing a standing ovation.
Belgian Prime Minister de Wever said the transition could be dangerous, recalling the words of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci: “If the old is dying and the new is not yet being born, then we are living in a time of monsters.”
“It’s up to (Trump) to decide whether he wants to be a monster or not. Yes or no,” De Wever said.
