The middle-power speed-dating game is on.
Regardless of whether Donald Trump’s presidency represents a blip or a new normal — and the odds are on the latter, despite his Greenland climbdown — US rivals and allies alike are realizing they don’t have time to spare.
Nations from Germany and Australia to Vietnam and Mexico need to avoid being trampled as Trump weaponizes the US economy against anyone if he wants a deal, of whatever sort, and as spheres of influence are carved out.
A basic principle of physics is that when particles come together, in aggregate they exert a greater mass than on their own. Or as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it in his barn-burner of a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
Diplomats will tell you there’s a growing appreciation of the need to diversify. Monogamy is out.
Trump is willing to align with autocrats if it serves his interests, and ditch allies from democratic nations — as seen in his Board of Peace.
Watch for transactional pragmatism elsewhere. We’re likely to see less lecturing of the Global South on human rights and pollution. The number of Western leaders beating a path to China is telling.
Countries will still want to keep a line into the US. But the understandings will be different as questions over Washington’s reliability harden.
Another speech this week — by Singapore’s Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing — is noteworthy.
“Those who fail to prepare, must prepare to fail,” he warned, adding that without sufficient attention to capabilities such as security, states like his “risk irrelevance.”
Trump appears to have told himself he won on Greenland, and moved on. The rest of the world is drawing its own conclusions. — Rosalind Mathieson