Trump's grand plan to reshape the world order leaves Europe with a difficult choice to make

"That era was inaugurated in March 1947 in an 18-minute speech by President Harry Truman, in which he pledged US support to defend Europe against further expansion by the Soviet Union. America led the creation of Nato, the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations. And it bound itself into what became known as the "rules-based international order", in which nation states committed to a series of mutual obligations and shared burdens, designed to defend the democratic world against hostile authoritarian powers."

"Now, the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), published in December, signals that, for the White House, that shared endeavour has ended; that much of what the world has taken for granted about America's role is over. The review refers to the "so-called 'rules-based international order'", putting the latter phrase in inverted commas: a kind of delegitimisation by punctuation mark."

"Vice-President JD Vance warned America's European allies that this was coming in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025. He told them bluntly that the real threat to Europe did not come from Russia but from within - from those censoring free speech, suppressing political opposition and therefore undermining European democracy. And he was damning about the "leftist liberal network". The French newspaper Le Monde said the speech was a declaration of "ideological war" against Europe."

For eight decades the United States anchored its relationship with Europe on collective defence and shared democratic values, backing institutions such as NATO, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. The post‑1945 framework became framed as a rules‑based international order to marshal mutual obligations against authoritarian threats. The December National Security Strategy signals a break with that consensus by casting the rules‑based order as questionable and by reframing internal political actors who censor speech and suppress opposition as principal threats to Europe. Vice‑President JD Vance's Munich warnings about a "leftist liberal network" have been incorporated into policy language, elevating ideological competition to formal doctrine.

Read at www.bbc.com