MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump has demolished the US-led global order, prepare for a rough 15 years

“We British have to accept that the old world order is gone. It was fantastic for us – a strong middle power – while it lasted. But that time is not coming back,” Mark Martin MP, Liberal Democrat

By Mike Martin MP - “We’re all one people … to all of you down there on Earth … we love you”. Listening to the crew of Artemis over the last week has been a refreshing reminder of a part of America’s soul. Deep inside, it is a country that holds the highest ideals about individual spirit and endeavour, and the potential of humanity when we work together. Hearing the astronauts with my four-year-old daughter has been inspiring and awesome.

Now try this: “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” and “Open the f---ing strait, you crazy b-----rds, or you’ll be living in Hell”.

This is the other side of America’s soul, one that President Trump has unleashed and elevated. The darker side of America that supported slavery would apparently now contemplate bombing civilian infrastructure, including water desalination plants.

As a committed Atlanticist, and someone who considers himself extremely pro-American, I know that this other side of the US still exists. But the damage done to America’s prestige recently is immense. Trump has done things over the last six months that cannot be undone. So even if the beautiful, idealistic side of America shines again, the rest of the world will have stopped listening.

The Danes cannot un-hear Trump’s coveting of Greenland, threatening to invade a Nato ally’s territory and forcing Denmark to wargame firing on American troops. We in the UK will not forget the insult towards our war dead, with Trump saying “we never needed them … they stayed a little back … off the front lines”. Britain lost 457 soldiers in Afghanistan with more than 2,000 seriously wounded. The Gulf allies will not forgive the US for launching a war in their neighborhood without consulting them, and then threatening to abandon the region with the fate of a key waterway uncertain as a result of that war.

United States will never be able to undo the damage that Trump, unstrained by anything in the American political system, has done to American prestige, influence and power. That damage is not constrained to the US: Britain could also suffer greatly.

Geopolitics often relies on intermittent military acts and infrequent speeches by leaders. Take Nato Article 5. Would the US have come to Europe’s aid in the event of a Soviet attack? No one knew for sure. But what mattered was that the Soviet leadership judged it to be enough of a possibility that they didn’t take any risks. In another example, the UK has benefited for decades from the 1982 retaking of the Falkland Islands – long after our military ceased being able to conduct such an operation.

What must the UK do now? Last month, Parliament’s joint committee on national security strategy released a report that warned that the UK should urgently reduce its deep security and defense reliance on the US because of the growing unpredictability in the UK-US relationship.

We must go further, and immediately start planning how to defend ourselves without the US. In the medium term we need to transition to a more European-led Nato and build stronger relationships with other middle powers such as Australia, India and Canada.We British have to accept that the old world order is gone. It was fantastic for us – a strong middle power – while it lasted. But that time is not coming back. We also must accept that the next 10 or 15 years will be very rough, and the only way we will get through them with our interests intact is by rearming as quickly as possible.

At some point in the 2030s, a new world order will start to be born that, if we have sufficient hard military power alongside our European allies, we will be able to shape just as we shaped the post-Second World War order. But if we go into the next decade without sufficient military power, the world – and the new world order – will be shaped around us. It’s our choice: stick or twist?