COMMENT: Europe’s disintegration is the goal of Trump’s éminence grise Steve Bannon and his The Movement. Europe’s reform towards a consolidated union is its greatest challenge.
The Munich Security Conference is a leading annual forum on international security and strategy. The theme of its recent instalment, assesses the crisis in the global order.
Chief among those unwilling to relinquish control is the United States. As the architect of the recent order, it remains the greatest power and the central agent in this inertial order. Its response to internal decay and loss of relative power, not a “perfect storm” of external factors, has led the Donald Trump administration to change its tactical means and ways towards maintaining its core national interests: continued pre-eminence and global leadership.
It will revoke its benign approach in order to take care of itself, first; its internationalism is being replaced by nationalism. The US will pursue its assertive national interest by leveraging its dominance; exerting power in order to maintain it. It will use its influence over partners as strategic instruments for co-option. Its retreat from the Iranian nuclear deal and its reimposition of sanctions on Iran limits partners from pursuing independent agendas.
The 2016 European Union Global Strategy takes a considerable step, employing strategy towards its interests; it is the first programme to declare strategic autonomy as its objective. To achieve this goal it must shed its ideological straitjacket and wake up to realpolitik. This articulation of the international order confronts hegemonic conceptions, asserting that no unilateral interpretation holds as absolute truth. By returning the state to the centre of global power, it asserts that sovereign states are not circumscribed by each other but only by legitimate international law and order.
Brics states have gained immense power under the open, networked order. It employs principled sovereignty to salvage this system and advance non-ideological co-operation. Its co-operation among its dissimilar member states presents a partnership that respects difference and recognises independence.
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