Why Carney and Von Der Leyen are wrong about the new world order (Telegraph article)

Article published in Daily Telegraph

Mrs Von Der Leyen claims “the shift in the world order is not only seismic – but it is permanent”. “We now live in a world of raw power”. This seems to be a response to the possible use of force by the USA in Greenland which Donald Trump has ruled out. Where was she when Russia used raw force from 2014 onwards to occupy parts of Ukraine? Has she forgotten the use of force by the Soviet Union to suppress eastern European countries before the fall of the Berlin wall? Has she not seen how Afghanistan, Iran and other Middle Eastern states have been using raw power against their own citizens and neighbouring states? Has she missed the terrorist attacks of the recent decades? Raw power has often been a chosen means of more than half the world which is not democratic.

She also wrongly asserts that the answer to this outbreak of raw power is to speed up and strengthen European union. So how would more EU laws resolve the problems of Ukraine? Would the stronger EU have an army and navy capable of intervening against the abuse of raw power in the Middle East and its disruption of trade and energy? Of course not. The EU’s answer to every bad trend and crisis is more EU, when more EU has pushed the member states further and further behind the USA in growth and military capacity.

Mr Carney rightly observes if “the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself”. He comes late to this realisation. The rules of his idealised Davos world did not protect us from wars, hunger, poor economic policies prior to Donald Trump. When did the UN last negotiate a peace and enforce it? When did the WTO last intervene to stop unfair trade with China? When did the international order last constrain Russia? Why didn’t the UN COP s he so liked get China and the emerging world to produce and hit tough carbon targets in the way the UK and EU did?

Belatedly this globalist has come to offer the advice I have given for years to UK governments. “A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options”. Exactly. The UK needs to grow more of its own food, produce more of its own energy and strengthen its defences. The last 125 years of history shows us we could only rely on the USA to help us in brutal wars, and then only if we had the power and ability to fight alone for a long time until their national interest required them to join in.

What President Trump is exposing in his own provocative way is the so called international rules based system let us down. The UN cannot prevent conflicts and had to allow great powers to veto actions. The WTO allows China and emerging economies asymetric rules that rest easy on them. The COP UN climate change system is ignored or gamed by most of the world. The Davos consensus on how to run economies has delivered vicious cycles with banking crises and nasty recessions. The independent Central Banks of Europe, UK and USin the west in the last six years allowed or created high inflation whilst the politically controlled central banks of China and Japan kept inflation down.

Mr Carney and Mrs Von der Leyen are wrong to think a tilt to China is the answer to their prayers of how they can grow faster and have better defence.