Read Our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Key elements of the post-world war international order have been fraying for years. So will Donald Trump’s war on Iran finally cause them to buckle and break altogether, like girders on a collapsing bridge? Or could something new and better eventually emerge from the crisis?
Multilateralism
The UN Security Council has long been unable to fulfil its mandate to uphold international peace and security – with the five permanent members of the Security Council able to veto any efforts to rein in either their own behaviour, or that of their clients (though France and the UK voluntarily stopped using their veto power years ago). Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza have highlighted the UN’s futility.
The US and Israeli attack on Iran, without any pretence at securing legal cover, has effectively driven the final nail in the coffin. The UN has been completely sidelined in this conflict. The US, who helped design the institution after World War 2, no longer pays either its dues, or even lip service to its founding charter, including the requirement to resolve international disputes by peaceful means.
It is hard to see how the UN will ever be able to reassert its claim to global authority or credibility, when even the world’s biggest power, whose strength once underpinned it, is no longer committed to its success. Unfortunately, there is no alternate international forum waiting in the wings to replace it. Instead, countries looking for solidarity or cooperation on common challenges may increasingly have to rely on ad hoc blocs, in regional or thematic groupings.
Other casualties of America’s drift towards unilateralism include free trade, global action on climate change, and effective international cooperation on a host of other issues such as health, science, migration, natural disasters, and development.
Reform Kent Council Suffers Walk Out After Party Declares ‘Immigration Emergency’ During Meningitis Outbreak
The motion by Nigel Farage’s party blamed the spread of “infectious diseases” on undocumented migrants
American Global Leadership
As America abandons multilateralism, and insists it is no longer willing to act as the world’s policeman, some believe that the era of ‘Pax Americana’, or the long period of relative world calm since World War II due to US leadership, is also coming to a close. Many predict this will pave the way to a permanently more unstable world, in which might is right, and the strong can bully the weak with impunity.
Trump’s defenders would argue the opposite – that with his action in Iran he is restoring American dominance, using the American military might to impose peace through strength, and putting all rogue states on notice that America will no longer tolerate their behaviour. Far from undermining international peace and security, with its actions in Venezuela, now Iran, and possibly next in Cuba, they assert that America is demonstrating the kind of robust leadership which is essential to prevent global problems from festering.
However, the notion of American leadership is dependent on the willingness of other countries to follow it. The reluctance of all of its formal allies, in Europe and Asia, to respond to Trump’s call for support in opening the Straits of Hormuz reveals they no longer trust America to lead them wisely. In fact, association with Trump’s America is currently proving politically toxic in most Western democracies, with many voters rewarding leaders who show themselves willing to stand up to Trump, for example, Mark Carney in Canada, Mette Fredericksen in Denmark, and Pedro Sanchez in Spain.
Critics of Trump would also observe that under his administration, America is also behaving too erratically and inconsistently to be a reliable global leader any more. A case in point is Trump’s visible reluctance to tackle Russia’s rogue behaviour in its near abroad, even though it threatens the security of America’s European allies, every bit as much as Iran’s behaviour threatens America’s Middle Eastern partners. While America is distracted in the Middle East, perhaps other powers will use the moment to advance their aggressive agendas – for example, Chinese claims on Taiwan.
If the US chooses to step further back from global entanglements, following the Iran war, there is no other global power willing or capable of stepping into its place to fulfil the role of world policeman. We are more likely to see the world dividing into blocs, with the dominant power in each region trying to exert overall authority – the US in the Western Hemisphere, China in Asia, the EU and Russia duking it out in Europe; and regions with no single dominant power, such as Africa, becoming even more unstable.
The Transatlantic Alliance
Antipathy between the US and its NATO partners has been growing for months, with Trump’s reluctance to come decisively to Ukraine’s aid, his outrageous territorial claims on Greenland, and ever more offensive verbal attacks on many individual members of the alliances, for allegedly failing to respond sufficiently to Trump’s bidding. The collective snub of most NATO countries to Trump’s request for help in the Gulf, and Trump’s dire threats to abandon NATO in return, simply represent the alliance’s deathknell.
Even if America is formally still a member of NATO, no other country can trust it any longer to honour the Article 5 commitment to come to their support in the event of an attack on them. For his part, Trump would claim that they are the ones who have broken the trust, in failing to come to America’s aid in its hour of need. The sense of betrayal is therefore mutual, and deep.
In fact, while Trump seems to be moving ever closer to the idea of the US formally breaking with NATO, many members of the alliance may also appear to be drawing closer to a similar conclusion themselves – that instead of trying to cling onto America, it is time for them to start weaning themselves off American dependance as well.
To the extent that this might lead more of them, at last, to start building up their own military capacities to be better able to manage their security by themselves, a process which is long overdue, this is potentially a positive outcome from the transatlantic rift, though the transition phase is undoubtedly a dangerous one.
