The temptation is strong to hope that the storm has passed. To believe that a week that began with a US threat to seize a European territory, whether by force or extortion, has ended with the promise of negotiation and therefore a return to normality. But that is a dangerous delusion.
There can be no return to normality. The world we thought we knew has gone. The only question now is what takes its place – a question that will affect us all, that is full of danger and that, perhaps unexpectedly, also carries a whisper of hope.
Forget that Donald Trump eventually backed down from his threats to conquer Greenland, re-holstering the economic gun he had put to the head of all those countries who stood in his way, the UK among them. The fact that he made the threat at all confirmed what should have been obvious since he returned to office a year ago: that, under him, the US has become an unreliable ally, if not an actual foe of its one-time friends.
That much was spelled out in ways both gross and insulting. In the second category comes his latest remark that Nato allies were “a little off the frontlines” in Afghanistan, a despicable affront to the families of the 457 British service personnel and their comrades from across the alliance who gave their lives in that conflict.
In the first category was the unveiling of his latest venture: having earlier told the Norwegian prime minister, who he falsely accused of denying him a Nobel medal, that he was becoming bored of peace, he came to Davos to launch his “board of peace”. Trump is the one book you can judge by its cover, and so the new body’s logo said it all: as one wit observed, it was basically the UN badge “except dipped in gold and edited so the world only includes America”.
That captured the essential points: that the “board of peace” is an attempt to supplant and monetise the post-1945 international architecture, replacing the UN with a Mar-a-Lago-style members’ club where a permanent seat costs $1bn and decision-making power lies in the hands of Trump himself, even after his presidential term expires. That Vladimir Putin has been invited, and Mark Carney shut out, tells you all you need to know.
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