Trump's America has made its choice

The UN General Assembly saw Washington formally disown the Pax Americana to line up with Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China seemed embarrassed.

On one side the United States, Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Burkina Faso and about a dozen other assorted dictators and autocrats. On the other, Japan. France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy - America’s fellow democracies in the Group of Seven - plus 80 or so more nations from every corner and continent.

The United Nations General Assembly is largely ignored by rich democracies. It’s a talking shop. Its resolutions are declaratory. The Security Council - the place where decisions can be taken or vetoes cast - is the one that matters. So it is unsurprising that, as the international community marked the third anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, attention focused on the passage of a US-drafted resolution at the Security Council that omitted mention of Russian aggression.

Sometimes, however, the General Assembly better reads the temper of the times. There was no clearer requiem for European colonialism, for example, than the assembly’s denunciations of the Anglo-French attack on Suez in November 1956.

So it has been this week. The assembly vote holding up Moscow as the author of the war is the one that will be remembered. It marked out the ugly, truly shocking moment when Donald Trump’s America formally surrendered any pretensions to global leadership or allegiance to a law-based global order.

Some 93 nations backed the resolution. The US and Russia led the 18 opposed. China joined the 65 abstaining. It was a vote, as the French ambassador in New York put in, for international law. His US counterpart joined the Russian representative in backing the primacy of force. For all the diplomatic and material support it has given Putin, Beijing seemed too embarrassed to throw its weight fully behind the lie that everything can be blamed on “the anti-Russian project that is Ukraine”.

Washington’s erstwhile allies are pretending that something can yet be salvaged from the wreckage of the old American-led order. Emmanuel Macron did his best to calm the waters during his talks at the White House at the start of the week. Keir Starmer will likely do the same when he visits during coming days.

Pusillanimous as such efforts to humour Trump may seem - and how wonderful it would be to see these leaders telling the unvarnished truth in public - the attempt is worth it if blunts Trump’s attempt to surrender Ukraine to Moscow. The assembly vote after all was not all good news. The 65 abstentions pointed to the failure of Europe as much as anyone else to persuade middle and rising powers that they too would be losers if Russian might were allowed to prevail in Ukraine.

Still, America’s erstwhile allies need time to adjust and reorder their foreign and defence policies. And Ukraine, facing pressure on the battlefield, needs American military supplies for as long as Trump can be persuaded to provide them. So the cringe-making flattery can be forgiven.

There must be some small hope that also, as supine as they have become, Republican lawmakers in Washington will grow uneasy that their nation - so long the shining city on the hill - now has to grub around in the darkest crannies to rustle up a few votes.

JD Vance seemed to think it great fun to turn up at the Munich Security Conference to denounce America’s Nato allies. But it was not only the Europeans plus Japan and Canada who voted against the US. There too on the opposite side of the aisle at the General Assembly were Australia and New Zealand, Peru and the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea. Doubtless, they will roll out the red carpet when the vice president visits Pyongyang and Minsk.

The mistake that erstwhile friends cannot afford to make, however, is to imagine that somehow the clock can be turned back. Trump has incinerated America’s standing as an ally. In future Europe will have to defend itself. So also South Korea, Japan, Australia and the rest. Huge decisions have to be made by these nations. Buying time to make them cannot be an excuse for hiding under the bedcovers. The US made its choice when it stood with the tyrants in the General Assembly.