In Trump’s world, look to the middle powers for hope 

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column

These days, Europe and America don’t agree on much.

But when it comes to the rules-based order, European and American leaders are in agreement: That order is gone.

But is it really gone? The American-led order — Pax Americana — died with the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024. It was clear that Trump 2.0 would continue and accelerate America’s abdication of the global leadership role Washington had first assumed in the early 1940s. 

That, however, is not the same as declaring the end of the rules-based order. And, yet, that is what a succession of leaders, starting with Mark Carney’s much-heralded address in Davos last month, have now proclaimed. “The old order is not coming back,” Carney admonished his audience. “Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised.” 

Carney is hardly alone in declaring the end of the rules-based order. In his speech to the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz similarly declared “that the international order, which is based on rights and rules, is on the verge of being destroyed. I fear we need to put it even more bluntly: this order — imperfect even at its best — no longer exists.”

America’s erstwhile allies weren’t the only ones to bemoan the end of the rules-based order. America’s chief diplomat in Munich this past weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also picked up a shovel to bury it.

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us,” Rubio asserted. “We can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations.”

The meetings in Davos and Munich of world leaders have no doubt underscored the reality of a United States vacating its traditional role as the leader of the free world, the main provider of public goods, and the principal champion of a world based on strong security alliances, open trade and the defense of democracy and human rights. 

Through tariff policies, threats to invade allied countries, unilateral use of force in Venezuela and elsewhere, Trump’s America has returned to acting like the imperial powers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Indeed, Rubio seemed to bemoan the fact that this era had ended. “For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.”

If this is what the United States seeks to offer the world as the new global order — a return to imperialism, empire building, exploitation of national resources, the imposition of Christendom — than surely the rest of the world can be forgiven for saying: No, thanks!

Nor did Rubio’s nostalgic appeal to Western civilization as the basis of transatlantic unity go over well. “We are part of one civilization — Western civilization,” Rubio declared. “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together.”

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us,” Rubio asserted. “We can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations.” | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

But for most Europeans — indeed, for most Americans — these are hardly the features that set the West apart. Missing from the list were such essential Western values as democracy, human rights and the rule of law. As America celebrates its 250th year of independence, it is remarkable that its chief diplomat seems to have forgotten what made America different — the idea, inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, that: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Trump’s America is offering the world something patently unacceptable to all but the most diehard realists, who put their faith in power and its naked pursuit. It is not a world others will want to live in.

But that doesn’t mean that the rules-based order is over. Yes, its major powers, led by Russia, China and the U.S., are no longer willing to live by the rules painstakingly developed over the past 80 years. But the rest of the world surely does — not least those middle powers, like Canada, the EU, Japan, Australia, India, Brazil and others Carney called to action.

On the security front, America’s NATO allies are reaffirming the importance of their security alliances and bolstering spending on new and necessary capabilities. They are supporting Ukraine in ensuring it will be part of Europe, thus depriving Russia of the principal aim of its war of aggression. 

New trading regimes are being negotiated among all the middle powers, to reduce the dependence of their economies on the predatory trade and supply-side policies of China and the U.S. Existing and new rules can govern trade among the 40 countries that belong to the EU, the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership, India and others. Together, these countries account for nearly 40 percent of global GDP — far outstripping the U.S. and China. 

And there’s nothing to prevent the middle powers from upholding basic human rights, supporting democracy and the international institutions that have evolved over the years to deliver goods and services and protection to those in need.

The U.S. may have abandoned its role in leading the rules-based system. But there is every reason to hope that those middle powers that have benefitted greatly from that system take up the leadership mantle instead.