Tue, Jan 13, 2026 page7

• On the new global disorder: Britain and Europe must find their own path

  • The Guardian Editorial
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Occasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. Sometimes, as former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in The New Statesman, history unfolds “in a series of flashes and bangs.”

  In Caracas earlier this month, US President Donald Trump’s forces did this in spectacular style. In the process, the US brushed aside more of what remains of the so-called rules-based order, with which it tried to shape the West after 1945.

  The capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has precedents in US policy. However, discerning a wider new pattern from the kidnapping is not easy, especially at this early stage. As our columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has argued last week, the abduction can be seen as an assertion of US power, but also as little more than a chaotic asset grab.

  HARD POWER

  The US’ historic allies are still struggling to understand these changes. Even more important, they are struggling to respond to them. Events such as those in Caracas raise stark questions of power. They embody the exact same reality that Trump delights in celebrating. The US is a superpower. Allies, including the UK, are not. These questions are not going to disappear. The British government should not be condemned for each hesitation. However, the hesitations cannot continue indefinitely. Britain needs a grown-up debate and a clear new course of international direction.

  In The Spectator last week, former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson rubbed Europe’s noses in it.

  “Trump has the means and the will ... and they [Europe and the UK] do not,” he said.

  In Caracas, Trump did more in a day than diplomacy has achieved in 10 years, he said.

  The issue is “Europe’s growing political impotence in the world,” he said.

  The way to reclaim a seat at the table is not through “histrionics” or “fine words,” but by the collective deployment of “hard power and hard cash,” he added.

  Many would disagree with this sweeping dismissal of international rules and its insistence on transatlantic realpolitik, perhaps because of its author. However, Mandelson is not alone. Officials, advisers, academics and commentators of every stripe are also trying to make larger sense of the US’ transformation from necessary power to rogue state.

  DEBATE NEEDED

  The arguments of Bew, adviser to four British prime ministers from Boris Johnson to Keir Starmer, are important. In his view, Caracas marks three things:

  First, an increased US willingness to use executive power for swift military action.

  Second, a further assertion of a US mercantilism that insists on US control of oil, gas and minerals.

  Third, at least as promoted by the US Department of State, a turn to a hemispheric approach, implying perhaps that China and Russia would be given freer rein in other regions.

  We can, should and do regret these emerging shifts. However, as Bew said, while we mourn the disintegration of the rules-based order and decry the mercantilism dominating the West’s most dynamic economy, the old world and its assumptions are not coming back any time soon. Countries such as Britain have to decide what economic and technological adaptations they should make in this new world to protect their interests and people. No one can pretend that is easy, but it is a debate that involves us all, with implications that would affect us all, and therefore one in which all must have a voice.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Fertility rate falls to lowest globally

  • 2

    Taiwan conflict ‘catastrophic’ for China: US report

  • 3

    ’Up to Xi’ on Taiwan, but would be ’very unhappy’ with a change in ’status quo’: Trump

  • 4

    China widens attack on Japan’s ‘nuclear threat’

  • 5

    Russia sends sub to escort tanker pursued by US