The international order that has prevailed since World War II is over.
The abandonment of Ukraine is just one manifestation, and not the most dramatic. More striking is the readiness of the United States to make aggressive claims on foreign territory without bothering to snatch up even a legalistic figleaf.
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That revolution has left the U.S.’s client states stranded, like outlying Roman provinces when there is a vacuum in the metropolis. America’s allies, whether in NATO or in the Pacific, have tended to define themselves geo-strategically as precisely that: America’s allies. Most, for example, have pursued defense procurement on the assumption that they will always be part of a U.S.-led bloc, and so can specialize rather than investing in full-spectrum capacity. That assumption is dead.
So are the other assumptions that make up what we think of as the international system. That nations should respect each other’s independence, for example; that the high seas should be open to commerce; that disputes should be settled through peaceful arbitration; that civilian government is preferable to military rule. These rules were sometimes broken, but they were never jettisoned. Until now.
It is easy to forget that they were products of a particular place and time, specifically Newfoundland, in August 1941, when Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter. That document became the basis of the Allies’ war aims when the U.S. joined the war, and served the same function for Nato during the Cold War. As recently as 2021, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden were committing themselves to an updated version of it.
All that in the trash can, as Ukrainians are the first to learn to their cost. Why, after all, was the West backing them? They don’t occupy strategically vital land or control key resources. Their most significant export was foodstuffs, and if that had been our sole concern, we would have pursued peace at any price.
No, the reason we were supporting Ukraine was that we had given our word. When Ukraine surrendered its nuclear stocks in 1994, it did so in return for a promise that its sovereignty would be guaranteed within its existing borders. Who guaranteed that promise? The U.S., Britain and, never forget, Russia.
In walking away now, we are not simply breaking our pledge, and suffering a concomitant loss of prestige. We are giving up on the notion that dictators should not help themselves to slices of neighboring countries. Without the principles of the Atlantic Charter, we are back to the pre-1939 world. The conflict in Donbas is “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
Ukraine, though, is the least of our problems. The U.S., on whose willingness to deploy force the entire arrangement always rested, is itself making hostile demands for territory. Let’s allow, for the sake of argument, that Trump’s ambition to annex Canada is lighthearted. I have never quite got the hang of “seriously not literally,” which strikes me as a way of being able to have things both ways. Still, I don’t expect U.S. troops to make another grab at Quebec.
Greenland, though, is a different story. Can you be certain that Trump won’t send forces there and eventually hold a referendum on whether to become American territory? Even if he is not so blatant, he seems more than ready to use economic coercion against Denmark. US allies, whether Canadian, Danish, or Panamanian, are having their noses rubbed in the reality of their client status. All that counts these days is superior force.
When Machtpolitik is the ruling doctrine in Washington, D.C., it becomes impossible to criticize Putin’s actions in Ukraine or China’s claims on Taiwan. While we might have strategic concerns, to do with semiconductors and sea-lanes and whatnot, we can raise no moral objections.
All this, as I say, leaves America’s allies scrambling desperately for a foothold. They are like the leaders of those Central Asian republics when news came through of the 1991 coup in Moscow. A few tried to preserve what they could of the old Soviet system. The more imaginative reinvented themselves as Islam-friendly nationalists.
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Britain, so far, is in the former category, tightening its carbon reduction targets and scurrying around in search of international courts to surrender its interests to, as if we were still in the 1990s. But it won’t last.
What comes next? An age of Chinese-dominated techno-surveillance? An era of wars and warlords? It is too early to tell. But I can tell you one thing now. We will look back on the old order with wrenching nostalgia.