There are only so many times Donald Trump can be offered a state and royal visit to temper his political tantrums. With his latest attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the halting of aid to Ukraine, it’s already clear that not even the offer of a bed for the night at Balmoral has worked.
The silver lining of the Trump experience over the past fortnight is hopefully that it leads to a more realistic appraisal not just of the implications of the re-election of this narcissistic, bullying, corporate thug, but an understanding of the role the US has played over generations. Trump and his gang members JD Vance and Elon Musk are just the ugliest of faces of the US global policy pursued for a century at least.
In 1992 Noam Chomsky published a bestselling booklet, What Uncle Sam Really Wants. A read of Chomsky may help Labour’s policymakers overcome their apparent naivety so worryingly displayed in the constant references to the special relationship between the UK and US.
Trump’s “America First” policy is simply a more blatant articulation of the role the US has pursued globally since at least the second world war. The US has had no qualms in supporting, dealing with and sometimes installing authoritarian regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s across the globe for decades. Dividing up Ukraine and its natural resources with Putin is little different from what US administrations have done in Latin America and Africa by using their economic and military might.
What has surprised European political leaders and commentators is that this is the first time a US president has done so on European soil since Franklin D Roosevelt carved up Europe with Stalin at Yalta in 1945 and that, unlike then, now there is no Churchill figure even to be invited to sit in the chair for the post-conference-deal photograph.
Our political leaders can continue to try to exploit the fiction of the special relationship and seek to avoid direct diplomatic conflict with the US and to fawn over Trump to extract what concessions they can, but this is at best buying time. That time needs to be used wisely.
In the short term, of course, there is a fundamental role to be played by European leaders to prevent a peace being imposed by Trump and Putin against the wishes of Ukraine. Standing up to the bullying behaviour of Trump and Vance to secure a place for Europe and Zelenskyy at the negotiating table is essential if Ukraine is not to be betrayed and a stable peace is to be secured.
During last Friday’s pre-planned mugging in the Oval Office Trump told Zelenskyy that he had no cards to play in these negotiations. That might have played well with the Trump base for now, but Vance, in particular, knows that pictures of Russian tanks rolling into Kyiv as a result of a US withdrawal of support for Ukraine would more than match the opprobrium poured on Joe Biden (even though Trump signed the deal) as a result of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It would have the potential of dismembering the Trump cult Vance would rely upon four years from now in a post-Trump election.
But in the longer term, it is clear that Trump’s behaviour since re-election – extolled in his nauseatingly arrogant, error-strewn speech to Congress on Tuesday night – is forcing on to the political agenda across Europe and the global south a discussion of what alternatives there are to a politics and economics dominated by the whims of US presidents and the aggressive self-interest of China.
There is an opening now for a much greater and more longer-sighted “coalition of the willing” capable of bringing together those in Europe and the global south to create the alliances and institutions needed to pursue the political and economic agenda that the US now resiles from.
This includes an economic cooperation agenda not based upon tariffs and protectionism for the wealthy, but one that is mutually beneficial and tackles both the grotesque inequalities between north and south and the common threat of the climate emergency.
The US, with its slashing of aid and punitive tariffs, is increasingly alienating countries and continents, and this presents an immense diplomatic opportunity for Keir Starmer’s government. Some say it’s the PM’s chance to make his mark on history.
Unwise and immoral plans to cut British overseas aid, undermining soft power, are a legacy of a sort, but how much better it would be to see our prime minister using our influence and heft to bring together all those who want to discuss and construct a world reordered without the malign influences of Trump and China. That really would be a place in history worth having.
John McDonnell is MP for Hayes and Harlington. He was Labour’s shadow chancellor from 2015 to 2020
