U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes the stage to address supporters at his rally, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 6.Brian Snyder/Reuters
We are in the midst of a kind of cold war, one that pits free societies against a growing bloc of authoritarian and ultra-nationalistic regimes that have rejected many of the values of democracy and pluralism.
What makes this one different is that the United States is no longer always on our side.
American voters made this clear when they chose a president who spent his campaign exuberantly endorsing, and being embraced by, authoritarian figures such as Viktor Orban of Hungary, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Narendra Modi of India. Donald Trump has promised to withdraw from, or dramatically reduce the U.S. role in, the alliances that bond the world’s democracies on crucial missions of climate change, trade and defence. He has surrounded himself with extreme figures who seem determined to carry out this realignment.
Countries such as Canada will need to work with our democratic allies to fill the America-sized hole in the free world, and prevent any further erosion, through military or political attacks, of the democratic sphere.
If we are to survive this era with our values and freedoms intact, we need to take several actions.
Get our own houses in order. On election night, I was struck by the words of Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung: “If Donald Trump is elected president, the world and Europe will need stable governments, reliability, and exemplary rules and laws above all.” He was horrified that Germany’s coalition government had begun collapsing that very day, with the ill-timed withdrawal of one of its parties.
We will not make it through the Trump era if our own governments lack legitimacy. Our governments need to be more stable, and more popular, than theirs. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proposed allowing a confidence vote on Jan. 15. He should take the advice of opposition leaders and pull the trigger immediately, so a new, consensus-minded coalition is in place early in 2025.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should do the same. He and his Liberal-led minority government are very unpopular, as any administration would be after nine years in office. Everyone knows there will be a new government, with a stronger mandate, at some point during the Trump term. If the Prime Minister wants to serve Canada best, he will trigger an election during 2024, so the uncertainty and domestic animosity are over before the most challenging times begin. We cannot be fighting ourselves when we face a larger global battle of historic proportions.
Be more united than they are. These elections are likely to replace liberal or social-democratic parties with conservatives. There will be a temptation, among Canada’s and Britain’s Conservative parties, Germany’s Christian Democrats and other voices on the moderate right to act as if they are better equipped to appease Mr. Trump through imitation or flattery.
This is a fallacy. During his first term, Mr. Trump was even more brutal and unco-operative toward reasonable-minded conservatives such as Germany’s Angela Merkel or Britain’s Theresa May than he was toward liberals. As a conservative leader, you are not going to become a “Trump whisperer,” shy of abandoning your own party’s core values and joining the autocrats.
On this, the moderate parties of left and right must be united. Liberals may abhor and condemn the domestic policies of Conservatives, but they can and should come together, as they did when Mr. Trump attacked North American free trade during his first term, on the need to protect the vulnerable elements of the democratic world: Ukraine and other European countries under physical attack, the Paris climate pact, the international trade and arms-control orders under political attack, and allies facing the misinformation-fuelled rise of extremist forces within their borders.
Accept that this will be expensive. Doing this will involve replacing big U.S. slices of the spending pie. Democracies, including Canada, will need to double their spending on aid and arms to Ukraine, and do so very quickly. This is more important than our own defence, though that, at least in Canada, also needs to be bolstered to strengthen our collective defence alliance.
This is no time for austerity – even though current interest rates and public-debt levels might make it seem otherwise. Mr. Trump and his bloc will be driving up public debt dramatically to satisfy their key (mainly well-off) constituencies.
Democratic pluralism promises a better and more equal life, and we will lose this battle if we cannot visibly deliver on that promise. The otherwise sensible fiscal restraint currently being practised by Canada’s and Britain’s governments, and the debt-limiting constitutional amendment in Germany, need to come to an end, at least for the opening years of this unprecedented challenge. If we are going to win this cold war, we need to show the world that we are indeed better than they are.