Such is the gravitational pull cast by Donald Trump and the US economy that the politics of the other 192 countries that make up the United Nations are rapidly being reduced to one long discussion about how to relate to, and challenge this ever darker and weirder presidency.
Before Trump’s extraordinary 58 minute speech on the supposed threats posed by open borders, sharia law, the UN’s failings and the “climate hoax”, the supporters of the UN’s values already knew they faced a challenge. Now they realise the degree to which the world’s superpower seems bent on the destruction of everything they believe.
Immediately after the shocked, and even embarrassed, UN delegates had recovered from Trump’s performance, the general assembly was addressed by leaders of two large Muslim states, the Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Subianto was strongly applauded when he asserted: “Might cannot be right; right must be right. No one country can bully the whole of the human family. We may be weak individually, but the sense of oppression and injustice will unite us into a strong force that will overcome this injustice.” Erdoğan insisted that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was completely out of control, and those that were silent in the face of his barbarity were complicit.
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And immediately prior to Trump’s address, the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, without mentioning the US, had given a sophisticated warning about the threat posed by the new authoritarians. “Today the ideals that inspired the UN’s founders in San Francisco are under threat as never before in their history. Multilateralism is at a new crossroads. This organisation’s authority is in check. We are witnessing the constellation of an international order marked by repeated concessions to power play. Attacks on sovereignty, arbitrary sanctions and unilateral interventions are becoming the rule.
“There is a clear parallel between multilateralism’s crisis and the weakening of democracy. Authoritarianism is strengthened when we fail to act in the face of arbitrary acts when international society falters in defending peace and sovereignty. Anti-democratic forces are trying to subjugate institutions and stifle freedoms. They worship finance. They praise ignorance, and act as physical and digital militias and restrict the press,” Lula said.
Others such as South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, insisted that the climate crisis was far from being a hoax, it represents a threat to global humanity
Yet the Trump speech also made even more stark and urgent the unavoidable question of how the world will operate in the absence of reliable American leadership.
This is not just a question for the global south, but also for Europe as it confronts Russia, for Asia as it wrestles with Chinese power and for the Gulf as it grapples with Israel’s military dominance. One response is the alliance of autocrats on display in Beijing at the beginning of the month led by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
But another is the still forming anti-Trump alliance led by Democrat leaders. This is operating apart from the UN, because the reality is that the UN institutions, gridlocked by the veto of competing power blocks, and abandoned financially by America, is being bypassed.
The US president’s claim to have ended seven “unendable wars”, all without any help from the UN, is absurd, but it is true that the UN security council is not longer capable of bring conflicts to an end. As Lula explained: “The tyranny of the veto sabotages the very reason for the UN’s existence.”
In his speech, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, made a pitch for the UN’s continued relevance, but he acknowledged the pillars of peace and prosperity were buckling, and multilateralism was suffering. “Multipolarity without effective multilateral institutions courts chaos – as Europe learned the hard way resulting in world war one,” he said.
By the end of his speech he was left to comfort himself by insisting “we must never give up”.
But the efforts to develop a strong anti-Trumpian alliance bringing together the global south and Europe has been weakened by the issue of double standards – the belief that Europe’s outrage with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not matched by similar outrage at Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, in a speech to 500 Columbia University students on Monday repeatedly warned his fellow Europeans to realise how much damage the double standards charge had caused to their image.
Indeed Sánchez is rapidly becoming the European leader most willing to stand in Trump’s way. At Columbia, he drew applause defending the positive virtues of migration and said: “Open societies are the best antidote to fanaticism” – remarks that had a special relevance given Trump’s attempts to silence the Columbia campus protests.
He added: “When the voice of a society is silenced, it ends up dying. Open societies thrive on words. Freedom of expression, of belief, the right to participate in public life empowers citizens. Losing the freedom to dissent is opening the door to tyranny”.
Related: Trump tariffs are reshaping old alliances as the global south plots its own path
Sánchez is also one of the front rank politicians trying to build alliances to stand up to Trump, convening on Wednesday with Lula and Chile’s Gabriel Boric an alliance entitled In Defence of Democracy focusing on issues such as reinforcing multilateralism, the rule of law and cooperation against extremism and the algorithms that weaken social cohesion.
But these global alliances are still in their infancy and ill-coordinated.
The greater danger is that each nation-state, driven by internal politics and assessments of their economic strength, will make their own decisions on how to combat, or bow to American power.
In making that decision, each country will know the strength of Trump’s shakedown diplomacy. By mixing trade, security, or immigration into one negotiation, Trump maximises his leverage – and however much he is reviled, it is a brave country that resists.
