Who Will Do It?
by Eduardo del Buey
Who Will Do It?
In my last article “2026”, I concluded that “Mr. Trump himself has stated that he is after absolute power and no one yet, not the Senate, the House, the Military, the Supreme Court, or the Republican Party appear able or willing to stop him.
Who or what can?”
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney clearly showed the way without mentioning Mr. Trump or the United States once.
It was the most elegant and eloquent call to arms I have heard in recent memory.
Prime Minister Carney stated that “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it.
Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.
This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.”
The continuum of a rules based western democratic order has been ruptured by the United States. Middle powers that I call “liberal democracies” (LDs) must unite in common cause against this.
These LDs include members of the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, among others.
We must come out from behind our wall of complacency and take the initiative.
They say that the best defence is a strong offence.
We must not wait for the U.S. to act.
We must act first and run the game by strengthening our hand for future negotiations. Let the U.S. understand that while we are the smaller power, we also have options and are not to be bullied.
Like the schoolyard bully, the US can be attacked in ways that not only hurt it economically, but that also deteriorate the Administration’s domestic support.
We must always react and do so thoughtfully, however. The US, even diminished, is still important to us.
How?
In a number of ways.
I would like to share examples of scenarios, some of which are extreme but all of which would wake America up to the realization that the road it has chosen could actually weaken it and even be disastrous for its citizens.
LDs could coordinate selling off U.S. securities, like Denmark has recently done, and investing their holdings in gold or other currencies like the euro, the yen, the pound and, pending policies that make the climate for investment more attractive in Canada, the Canadian dollar.
The impact on the U.S. would be rising interest rates, stock market volatility, and a currency devaluation, all of which would awaken America to its own vulnerabilities.
Only changes to economic and bureaucratic policies in each country can protect them from negative effects.
Investment chases stability and returns.
As the U.S. dollar weakens and their currencies strengthen, LD markets would likely be tempted to purchase U.S. goods.
LDs would have to negotiate trade agreements among each other (already underway) and, perhaps, impose targeted tariffs on U.S. goods to substitute U.S. products with those from partner countries as industries are rebuilt.
In addition, there are dozens of U.S. military bases in Europe.
Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders would pursue a unified military structure along the lines of NATO eventually phasing out the U.S. in order to defend against Russian designs to recover Eastern Europe or Chinese designs on Taiwan, the Pacific, or Latin America.
This would improve the security of all NATO countries -- a win-win. The military spending required would be a source of job creation and industrial regeneration.
American forces would be invited to leave, and military overflights and landing rights in European airspace would be suspended.
British and French nuclear capabilities would have to be recalibrated so that they can acts as a credible deterrence against any nuclear attack from abroad.
U.S. digital-based companies could be taxed heavily or, in the worst case, shut down in the interest of “national security”. Netflix, Amazon, Google, Disney, Apple, and others make billions of tax-free dollars in the Liberal Democracies. Their leaders are among Trump’s strongest supporters.
Will this support continue if they are targeted? Perhaps not if they lose their market share and are replaced by other companies that can provide the same services.
Finally, our mentalities must change.
As Prime Minister Carney said, “today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.”
We must all end our dependence on the United States and on its military umbrella and its entertainment magnetism.
We must end this quest for trade deals with a country whose leadership does not respect us or the deals it signs.
We must also accept the fact that there will be costs for all of us as we transition from this rupture towards a new and, perhaps, more effective and equitable world order.
But, there will also be opportunities for domestic producers of digital entertainment, military equipment, and consumer and industrial goods – all of which would create jobs and provide income for millions around the world.
We are in an era of revolution: in this case, a revolution of the mentalities.
So, who can stop Mr. Trump and his supporters?
We all can, if we unite and go from reactive to calibrated proactive stances.
We have no option but to stand up and say, enough. Prime Minister Carney has, and other leaders are beginning to echo these sentiments.
Given the climate in the U.S. and the inability of its institutions to rein in President Trump’s idiosyncrasies, this may be the only option we have.
You have set out some good scenarios of faitly extreme detachment from US hegemony - militarily, security. economically, trade finance entertainment arising from PM Carney's speech of a changing world order. We have already seen a successful groupoing of influence over Greenland and tariffs and maintenance of Nato where Trump appears to be backing off. Other opportunities will present themselves in the WtO Oecd UN etc to assert a LD middle power influence. Meanwhile Triump.popularity plummeting at home and his policies will have to adapt. May become a question of waiting Trump out until circumstances allow for at least a partial return to a more stable world order with adfitional elements for greater resiiilience.
There is no going back to before Trump in the US. The damage is dine. Even if democrats hold the majority again in upcoming elections (if they are allowed-worst case scenario is not at all unlikely-) institutions have been eroded and extremism has taken hold in the public’s mindset. The solution resides in the LDs as was magnificently proposed by PM Carney. May other leaders follow and have the courage to defend an intelligent and humane way of surviving this change.