“What do you know about quantum mechanics?” the creator of the atomic bomb asks his very first student at Berkeley in Oppenheimer (2023). “I have a grasp of the basics,” replies Giovanni Lomanitz. “Then you’re doing it wrong,” interrupts Oppenheimer.
The same is true of the new world order – if that is the phrase – that was turbulently launched at Davos last week. If you think you understand it, you’re “doing it wrong”. Which is to say: in 2026, it is not even clear what the precise geopolitical question is, let alone what the answer might be.
In the aftermath of the second world war, it took a mighty cohort of diplomatic, political and legal geniuses – Eleanor Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Ernest Bevin and others – to establish the rules-based order whose “fading”, Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada, so eloquently and memorably described on January 20.
The task of the postwar architects was daunting but unquestionable: to establish a global structure of laws and institutions to prevent military conquest, deter the use of nuclear weapons and ensure that the Holocaust never happened again. The challenges facing their counterparts today are much more numerous and complex: how to secure peace, prosperity and at least the rudiments of justice in a newly multipolar world, roiled by populism and autocracy, pulverised by a technological revolution, confronting a climate emergency that Donald Trump last week dismissed as “the Green New Scam”.
Here, then, are a few preliminary recommendations for the new era; suggestions for the colossal psychological realignment that is needed, and, frankly, long overdue.
Hug the cactus:
This is no time to minimise the peril, the urgency of the crisis or the need for world-class statesmanship. Carney was absolutely right: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Yes, it was good to hear Trump announce that he was no longer contemplating the invasion of Greenland and, subsequently, to read his Truth Social post removing the threat to impose tariffs on eight countries that had dared to send a small military contingent to the island. But his speech was also a manifesto of menace. “You can say ‘yes’ and we will be very appreciative,” he warned, “or you can say ‘no’ and we will remember.”
He chastised Carney – “Canada lives because of the United States” – and went on to threaten Canada with a 100% tariff if it signs a trade deal with China. When Carney said, “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he wasn’t kidding. So join him in hugging the cactus.
Don’t be a “Just-Trumper”:
Don’t be a “Just-Trumper”: In the summer of 2015, anti-MAGA Republicans started to identify themselves as “Never-Trumpers”. Since he has been the party’s presidential nominee in three successive elections, and victorious in two, it is fair to say that their project was a failure. But it was honourable.
The same cannot be said of those who delude themselves – and others – that Trump alone is the problem and that his departure from office will restore business as usual. They fixate on the president’s sanity and health, as if political courage in Congress or actuarial forces will terminate MAGA itself.
No cabinet appointed by Trump is going to remove him from office by invoking the 25th amendment; and – irrespective of the mid-term results in November – 67 senators are not going to convict him in an impeachment trial (he has twice beaten the rap).
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Heckling Trump in Davos
As for his physical state:
Trump has been living on junk food and medication for his entire adult life. He is mortal like the rest of us, but it is a bad plan to invest all your hopes in his odds of surviving (or not) until January 20, 2029. And don’t forget that, if he failed to complete his second term, he would be replaced by JD Vance, who hates Europe even more.
In any case, this president is merely the most rude, mercurial and dangerous manifestation of a long-established withdrawal by the US from its postwar role as guarantor of global security. In 2011, Robert Gates, defence secretary under both George W Bush and Barack Obama, was quite explicit about the risks: “The blunt reality is there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defence.”
There might come a time, he continued, when “US political leaders… [did] not consider the return on America’s investment in Nato worth the cost”. In 2016, Obama complained that “free riders aggravate me”. Five years later, Joe Biden presided over the bedlam of the retreat from Kabul – a dire episode that demonstrated both America’s bipartisan determination no longer to be the world’s policeman and, no less importantly, its readiness to take hugely consequential action without consulting No 10 (or anyone else for that matter).
The direction of travel was abundantly clear long ago. But, on this side of the Atlantic, it suited us to postpone the moment of reckoning until forced to do so by the invasion of Ukraine and, more pointedly, Trump’s re-election. In return for US hegemony and defence of the west, we got to enjoy the dividends of social democracy. We were greedy, and we were lazy, and we preferred to cling to fiction and to ignore America’s quiet quitting. Reality has now bitten, and bitten hard. Don’t imagine for a second that the old order will be restored when Trump is gone.
Don’t seek to rejoin the EU:
We need to aim much higher than that. The battle of 2016 is in the past. The battle of 2026 – and beyond – is truly existential, and involves a capacity for political imagination that, let us say, has yet to reveal itself within our governing elite.
The notion of a defence identity has been part of Europe’s postwar DNA since French prime minister René Pleven proposed a unified European army, a plan that became a treaty establishing the European Defence Community signed by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in May 1952. Ironically, it was the French – and, more predictably, the Americans – who nixed the idea.
In 1998, the St Malo declaration agreed by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac proposed an autonomous European defence force. It was endorsed by the EU, but was stripped of its sinew by those in Bill Clinton’s administration, who saw it as a threat to Nato.
Today, a very basic foundation for future defence cooperation, including the UK, has been laid by Emmanuel Macron’s European Political Community, established in 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. At present, it is a forum rather than an engine of action – and it needs to become the latter, or at least the political force that compels the creation of such a force.
The EU must become, at pace, as good at scaling technological innovation as it is at regulating it. It must learn to take risks as readily as it imposes rules. This will require nothing short of a transnational cultural revolution, driven by a geostrategic imperative.
The new Europe that the UK joins – not “rejoins” – will have defence coordination as its galvanising purpose.
WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?
“[I]n my view, the seismic change we are going through today is an opportunity, in fact a necessity, to build a new form of European independence,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, at Davos. “This need is neither new nor a reaction to recent events. It has been a structural imperative for far longer.”
She is quite right, and it is heartening that eight European countries, including the UK, have committed to spend 3% or more of GDP on defence (Poland, the Baltic states, and Greece already do so; Germany, the UK and Denmark have pledged to follow their lead). France, disappointingly, has yet to join this group.
Yet, as Prof Niall Ferguson rightly pointed out at a Victor Pinchuk Foundation breakfast in Davos: “I would love to understand why the pace of European re-armament is still so slow, because it’s one thing to commit to increase your defence spending to 3% or even 5% of GDP. It’s another to actually do something, to procure the weapons to modernise the defence forces of Europe… Speeches at Davos aren’t going to do it, folks, no matter how passionate they are.”
Politicians love to talk about “hard decisions” and “trade-offs”. Well, welcome to the era of really hard decisions. When George HW Bush popularised the idea of a post-cold war “peace dividend”, it was hard to imagine that the nations of Europe might, in less than four decades, need to become war economies once again. But that is what has happened.
Already, marchers in Whitehall have brandished “Welfare not Warfare” placards in protest at this government’s spending strategy. How will they respond to the priorities of the new world? To being informed that we can no longer take the American comfort blanket for granted and must spend a lot more on defence?
How willing is the political class to speak truth to those who put them in power? And – the heart of it all – what are we ready to forgo to spend more on weaponry, cutting-edge technology and manpower? This is the greatest question now facing Europe.
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The polls have spoken: middle America now hates Trump
Build “Skunk Works”:
The first “Skunk Works”, led by the aerospace engineer Kelly Johnson, was set up by Lockheed Martin in Burbank, California, in 1943 – the nickname inspired by the malodorous “Skonk Works” factory in the Li’l Abner comic strip. The unorthodox, intensive, unashamedly secretive work of the Lockheed team produced the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft, and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.
Last week, Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, poured scorn on the dilemma now faced by Europeans, speculating that they might unleash their “most forceful weapon,” the “dreaded European working group”. As discourteous as this quip was, it struck a nerve. So did Volodymyr Zelensky’s remark that “Europe loves to discuss the future, but avoids taking action today.”
The development of a distinct European defence identity will require more than money.
The coordination of procurement is still woeful, with the pattern of duplication and incompatibility dire. According to data from 2021, only 18% of European defence investment is collaborative.
For instance: the US has four classes of frigates and destroyers, while the EU and UK have more than 30. The US has one principal class of tank; on this side of the Atlantic, we have 18.
These are problems that will never be solved in Brussels. They require warp-speed mini-Manhattan Projects, intended to think beyond the procedural decorum, consensus-building and passion for regulation that characterise the EU.
Some of the problems demand the development of an entirely new technological and manufacturing base – not least to produce an independent early warning system and a fully autonomous Anglo-French nuclear capability, probably including Germany in due course (for the foreseeable future, the EU and the UK will remain dependent upon the US on both fronts – but that is precisely why it is so important to begin work now on autonomous capacity).
To prevent duplication in procurement: don’t hold a summit. Poach 100 top employees from Apple (security-vetted, of course) and give them six months to produce a plan to enhance radically the compatibility of EU+UK defence. Nothing off the table, all options open, rivalries set aside. Think big or go home.
Read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes:
No, really. I just checked and it’s free on Apple Books and only 66p on Kindle. This great text of political philosophy, first published in 1651, is also one of the most misunderstood.
In the truest sense, Hobbes was a liberal, whose highest ambition was to make possible “commodious living” and for all people to transcend a life that would otherwise be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” by entrusting their security and defence to a sovereign power.
His great insight, no less true than it was amid the great conflicts of the 17th century, is that no form of civilisation is possible without safety and order. Even Adam Smith, the founding father of modern capitalism, acknowledged in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that “defence… is of much more importance than opulence”.
By an incremental process of cultural amnesia, especially since 1989, we have lost sight of this most basic fact of statecraft and of all meaningful social contracts. Last week, as the US definitively showed itself no longer to be a trusted ally, we were rudely awoken from our slumber.
The challenge is as exciting as it is formidable: an urgent collective mission for Europe in its broadest sense; for Britain at the heart of Europe once more. Are you doubtful, curious, uncertain? Good. That’s how it begins.
