Making sense of international disorder

…Or how Britain’s retreat from the Caribbean in 1905 maps the new geopolitical landscape

The dream of Europeans during the second half of the 20th century was that after two terrible wars the world had left history behind. Instead of fighting over territory nations could argue about norms. It was a noble ambition that for a moment during the post cold war 1990s seemed tantalising within reach. It turns out, though, to have been an interlude. The best to hope for now is that we can relearn some of the lessons of more distant history.

A good way of looking at the emerging global disorder is through the telescope of the British navy’s departure from the Caribbean more than a century ago. The reluctant withdrawal of an over-stretched British empire challenged by a newly assertive United States offers sight of the coming era of great power competition. Most obviously, this transfer of maritime pre-eminence from an established to a rising power almost perfectly describes China’s ambition to command the waters of the Western Pacific. More broadly, it marks out the contours of the landscape long sought by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping - one now drawn also by Donald Trump.

In 1905, the British government closed its main West Indies and North America naval station at Port Royal in Jamaica. A year earlier US president Theodore Roosevelt had announced the hardening of Washington’s “Monroe Doctrine” in order to assert8 military hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. The original doctrine, promulgated by president James Monroe in 1822, spoke to an essentially defensive posture. The United States, it said, would not stand idle if European powers sought to extend their colonial reach any further into central and Latin America.

The Roosevelt corollary, as it was called, consciously replaced the passive with the active. Backed by a fast-growing fleet of warships, it was a statement of America’s intention to run its own backyard. Henceforth Washington would replace Britain as the regional hegemon, assuming the right to intervene in the domestic affairs of its neighbours when it judged its own security imperilled. Thus began the long period of, often violent, hemispheric interference that today sees Trump marshalling the US fleet in the Caribbean to destabilise Nicholás Maduro’s Venezuelan dictatorship.

The British decision to leave without a fight marked the better part of valour. The booming American economy had overtaken that of the empire some three decades earlier. Roosevelt was now set on turning economic weight into geopolitical punch. His predecessor William McKinley had embarked on the republic’s first colonial adventure, seizing Cuba and the Philippines from Spain after a short but decisive war. And in 1904 Washington had taken over the stalled project to build the Panama canal that would link its strategic interests in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Wisely, Britain decided that it was time to concentrate its battleships in waters closer to home, where its naval superiority was being threatened by the Kaiser’s Germany.

If all this seems like ancient history, Chinese scholars and policymakers will beg to disagree. Consider Beijing’s increasingly belligerent advances in the East China sea. To its mind, 1905 set a precedent - a template that should now be applied to the western Pacific. Great powers, the Roosevelt corollary had declared, have the right to control their own waters.

The parallel is plain, If a rising America could push out the established hegemon from its maritime neighborhood, how can Washington now complain at China’s claim on the western Pacific? Just as American security depended on control of the Caribbean so that of China now rests on suzerainty over the South China sea, including most obviously Taiwan. Like Britain 120 years ago, the United States is an external power in the seas bordering China. It should leave gracefully.

From the outset of his second term Trump has given the impression he agrees. He has all but repudiated the global responsibilities of the post cold war Pax Americana, instead asserting Washington’s abiding interest in its own hemisphere. Hence his early menacing of Canada, Greenland and Panama and now the naval build up in the Caribbean. The latest National Security Strategy crystallises the shift: “The days of the United States propping up the entire world like Atlas are over”.

Instead, the ambition is to “restore American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere”. This means, in turn, “We will deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities”. And to underscore the point: “The United States must be pre-eminent in the western hemisphere as a condition of our security.”

On one level this could be said to fire a shot over China’s bow China lest it seek to exploit further its considerable economic links with Latin America. On the other hand, substitute “China” for “the United States” and “Pacific” for “hemisphere” in the quotation above and you can see why Chinese policymaker have been nodding agreement with Trump’s approach..

If America’s decision to dance on the grave of the postwar rules-based international system is cause for quiet satisfaction in Beijing, the might-is-right approach to the policing of great power neighbourhoods has prompted public applause in Moscow. Almost from the outset of his presidency Putin has had two ambitions: to cut the umbilical cord tying European to America security and to reassert Russian influence over the former Soviet space - including, of course, by waging war on Ukraine.

Trump has delivered the first of those objectives without prompting. The National Security Strategy is explicitly hostile towards the European Union and neutral about Putin’s Russia. Some say Putin has cast a undisclosed personal hold over the president. Perhaps. But Trump has scarcely made a secret of the fact that he thinks Moscow’s revanchism has merit. If America can lay claim to the western hemisphere then what should not Russia, like China, rule in its near-abroad? Hence the White House’s consistent efforts to bully the Kyiv government into capitulation to Russian aggression. Ukraine - and its European backers - must be more than cautious as the White House tightens the “peace” ratchet. One thing is certain: any security guarantees offered to Kyiv by the United States will be worthless.

There is a danger in imposing structure and logic on Trump’s worldview. The National Security Strategy is more a random walk through the instincts, irascible impulses and deep prejudices of the MAGA movement than a coherent expression of foreign policy.

Unconsciously, it also reflects a geopolitical reality that Trump probably has not grasped and anyway dare not admit. The Administration has found it much easier to kick around allies than to confront determined adversaries.

An implacable Xi, who for months simply refused to accept a call from the White House, has forced it to retreat on trade tariffs. Putin has been prepared on occasion to flatter the president but has refused to yield an inch on his territorial demands in Ukraine. By contrast, America’s allies, and above all the Europeans, have felt too dependent to confront him.

As for Trump, well, bullies always pick on the weakest. And he has never grasped that for three quarters of a century American power was buttressed rather than diminished by Washington’s alliances. Beijing and Moscow are the principal beneficiaries of his assault on the EU.

The British statesman Lord Palmerston boasted that the British empire had no permanent allies, only permanent interests. In taking the world back to where it stood at the end of the 19th century, when rules were no more than a measure of relative power, Trump has set off on the same road. It will prove once again to be a cul-de-sac. Europe, though, cannot afford to wait for that realisation to dawn in Washington. It must beginagain to defend itself.