LONDON (AP):
The Saudis are furious. The Danes are scrambling. Colombia has backed down. Mexico and Canada stand in a purgatory between tariff wars with the US and… not. China has retaliated, launching a trade war between the economic superpowers. The Brits, long proud of their “special relationship” with the United States, are leaning into their tradition of quiet diplomacy.
It’s as if President Donald Trump has flung a bag of marbles across the global stage under the feet of foreign leaders who have often stepped together through eight decades of postwar global order.
Everyone, it seems, is responding to Trump – even Australia’s leader, when asked last week for his thoughts only a few hours after Trump announced that the US would “take over” the decimated Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
“I’m not going to, as Australia’s prime minister, give a daily commentary on statements by the US president,” Anthony Albanese told reporters.
Acknowledged publicly or not, world leaders are watching Trump’s wood-chipper approach to some American government institutions and wondering about those of the post-Cold War order: What of the US roles in NATO, the United Nations, the World Bank, and other pillars of the international order? On US-controlled NATO, Trump has long questioned the value of the pact and threatened not to defend members of the alliance that fail to meet defence-spending goals. On his first day back in the Oval Office, Trump began to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the second time, an act that would leave the UN agency without its biggest donor. WHO’s leaders huddled over a response and asked diplomats to lean on Washington to reverse Trump’s decision. A German envoy worried: “The roof is on fire.”
“Trump’s actions portend a permanent shift in the landscape – not just a switch that flips back in four years,” wrote Heather Hurlburt, a political and international affairs expert with Chatham House, a think tank in London.
Outside of leadership circles, anyone who depends on US aid for food and medicine is coming to grips with the life-and-death implications of not having it after Trump’s drive to dismantle USAID and its six-decade mission to stabilise countries by providing humanitarian aid. The Vatican charity voiced outrage Monday at what it called “unhuman” US plans to gut USAID.
“We’re waiting for the decisions, but we are not very, I would say, optimistic,” said Arjana Qosaj Mustafa of the Kosovo Women’s Network, an umbrella group of 140 NGOs. “Nevertheless, we are resilient. So we’ll try to do our best.”
Emboldened by his re-election and with help from presidential friend Elon Musk, Trump has unleashed his signature chaos by distraction on the world.
A STORY OF ‘FLOODING THE ZONE’ AND EXAMPLES SET
Presidential orders and utterances –he has suggested annexing Canada and taking over the Panama Canal – occur at a speed that can atomise opposition. No one person or government can keep track of them all. And that, rather than clarity, is the effect of what Trump’s allies call “flooding the zone”.
Do you have a problem with it? Trump has an answer: “Fafo,” short for “mess around and find out,” except the first word isn’t ”mess.” The president posted the acronym on social media, complete with a photo of him in a fedora and pinstripes.
Ask Colombia what happens when you say no to Trump. Its president briefly resisted planeloads of immigrants during Trump’s first week – until the 47th US president threatened the country with as much as a 50 per cent hike in tariffs. Colombia accepted the immigrants. Boom! Example set.
The enforcement technique has long delighted Trump’s supporters, who turned out for him during the 2024 election heavily influenced by their anxiety over the economy and their finances, according to APVotecast. Trump says he is trying to save taxpayer money and spend it on issues that align with American interests.
Take Greenland and the Gaza Strip. The isolationist “America first” president says the US will do so. He eventually ruled out using the military to move Gaza’s two million people elsewhere, but he planned to develop the seaside enclave into a luxury resort stand.
Never mind that friends and foes alike, from the volatile Middle East to China and the stauid UK, have cast the idea as a non-starter. Powerful Saudi Arabia issued an “absolute rejection” of it. Or that it could jeopardise the fragile hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, Egypt’s peace deal with Israel. It could violate international law, too.
Also, Palestinians streaming back to what once were their homes after 15 months of relentless air raids overwhelmingly say they are not leaving. But Trump’s plan has found support in Israel, with leaders there taking care to say leaving would be “voluntary” rather than forced expulsion, which would be a war crime.
WORLD LEADERS SCRAMBLE TO LEAD
“We are not a bad ally,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen found it necessary to tell reporters last week, like other leaders on their heels as they respond to the Trump administration.
In this case, according to the Copenhagen Post, Frederiksen was responding to comments by Vice President JD Vance on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures that the EU and NATO member nation was “not being a good ally”. He repeated that an American acquisition of Greenland was “possible”.
That came after Frederiksen had flown to European capitals last month to urge other countries on the continent to respond with one voice against Trump’s vow to make Greenland part of the United States. Denmark also has legislation to crack down on racism towards Greenlanders and has sent US$2 billion to the Arctic island for its security.
Frederiksen also shared a photo on Facebook on January 26 of European leaders dining at her home, with the caption: “We have always stood together in the Nordic countries. And with the new and more unpredictable reality in which we are facing, good and close alliances and friendships have only become more important.”
The sentiment is spreading to larger groups. A recent meeting of EU leaders in Brussels that was supposed to be about boosting defence against the Russian threat became very much about Trump.
“We have to do everything to avoid this unnecessary and stupid tariff war or trade war,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters. He said Trump’s threats of tariffs on the EU amount to “a serious test” of European unity, and “It’s the first time where we have such a problem among allies.”