Page 27 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine April 2025

bne April 2025 Cover Story I 27
Welcome to the new world order. Values and liberal democracy are giving way to a world
run on the basis of deals. The West
has dominated the unipolar US-led hegemony since WWII but has lost its mojo. The might makes right approach to international affairs adopted by the fast-growing leading emerging markets is spreading around the world and
the West is increasingly powerless to counter it.
Only a few months ago the world was characterised as being split into two camps: the West and China. But since the war in Ukraine started things have become a lot more complicated. Now with the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House the global rules-based international order has been tipped on its head and has rapidly given way to a new set-up: a transactional multipolar world. The values-based order is not dead, but it is sick.
In the space of little more than two months, political scientist Stewart Patrick argues that Trump has revolutionised US foreign policy in
a way not seen since Pearl Harbor in a paper for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He identifies ten major changes:
• An abdication of US leadership and responsibility
• A mindset of sovereignty on steroids
• A denigration of the West – and US alliances
• A revival of spheres of influence
• A dismissal of international law
• A preference for bullying bilateralism
• Repudiation of economic multilater- alism
• A disavowal of global development
• An abandonment of democracy promotion
• A rejection of global public goods
Trump has pulled the US out of dozens of international organisations that represent liberal values such as the UN Human Rights Council and is actively dismantling US soft power tools like USAID and closing Radio Free Liberty and VOA. At home Trump has openly attacked values-based legislation like America’s Equity & Inclusion (DEI)
laws and institutions. And he has destroyed the trust of the US’ oldest and most loyal allies, threatening to annex Canada, Greenland and Panama, and slapping painful tariffs on the EU and other trade partners from liberal countries. He is even threatening to pull out of Nato, which has undermined European security, as no one believes that the US will come to the EU’s aid anymore if Russia invades the Baltics
or Poland.
Most shocking of all, Trump appears to have abandoned Ukraine, demanding it pay for the war by signing away its mineral rights, and more recently, handing over control of its nuclear power stations. On the other hand, he has gone remarkably soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin and made
it clear that he wants to do business with Russia and is prepared to ease the sanctions as part of the deal.
Ukraine has been fighting a bitter war against Russia for three years in the name of defending the liberal values that are enshrined in Article 2 of the EU’s founding treaty. "The war in
faces the possibility of breaking up. Cracks in EU unity have already turned into fissures in the last month. That has been illustrated by the UK-led vague
“coalition of the willing” to take over the military support of Ukraine that has been an EU project until now, after several members refused to join or pay for support.
Like Xi and Putin, Trump appears to have largely abandoned the values- based model completely. Canada
and the EU have threatened to fight back and impose their own equally painful tariffs on US goods, but Trump seems fine with that. He is pursuing
a transactional-based foreign policy where mutual tariffs can be negotiated until a “good deal” is struck. A recent article in the Financial Times concluded that this puts the US closer to the way Russia and Turkey are run than the EU. Even Italy’s far-right party adheres to values more than the US, according to the FT.
Fragmentation from bipolar to multipolar
Trump has thrown geopolitics into chaos and politicians and analysts are scrambling to keep up. The model has changed.
Only last year, it was popular to see the world divided into two poles: the US and its allies, with the EU playing Robin to America’s Batman; and China and its allies and dependents.
“Like Xi and Putin, Trump appears to have largely abandoned the values-based model completely.”
Ukraine is a war in general for values: life, democracy, freedom. So this is a war all over the world," the Ukrainian president said only a few days after Russia invaded his country. But in
the space of a few weeks Trump has dumped values for the sake of “America First” and making some money.
Without America’s support, the EU is coming under increasing pressure and
Capital Economics described this model as a fractured world with a complicated graduation of loyalties amongst the allies that was evolving over time.
Other analysts preferred a tripolar model where China and Russia were allied, but since the start of the Ukraine war Russia has risen in prominence and avoided simply becoming a Chinese “commodi- ties warehouse” that some predicted.
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