This is a follow-up to my previous post on the end of US democracy and its implications. Here I will discuss how what’s left of the democratic world can respond.
Surprisingly in many ways, the military part of dispensing with the US is the easiest bit, in each of its major areas of operation: Europe, Taiwan, and the broader Asia-Pacific region including Australian and New Zealand.
As regards Europe, NATO would be massively stronger with the US (100 000 troops in Europe) out and Ukraine (Zelensky claims 800 000) in.
While US military aid was essential in the early years of the war, others are now supplying the bulk of military aid, and Ukraine’s own capacities are increasing. The last tranche of US aid, delivered under Biden, means that any withdrawal of US support will not have much effect for some time to come. Even if Ukraine is forced to make some concessions to achieve a ceasefire, Russia will get nowhere near its war aim of imposing a compliant government on Ukraine.
Looking ahead, Russia has lost the vast majority of its pre-2022 armed forces, and is now scraping the bottom of various barrels (North Korean ammunition dumps and troops, refurbishment of Soviet era tanks, desperate financial expedients and more). Russia will take decades to rebuild what it has lost in Ukraine, even assuming that failure there does not provoked a post-imperial reckoning.
As regards Taiwan, it’s become increasingly evident that the idea of a seaborne invasion (always dubious) is a chimera. The destruction of Russia’s Black Sea fleet by a largely home-made Ukrainian set of anti-ship missiles and drones shows the vulnerability of a surface fleet to even moderately well armed opponents. The failure of the US Navy to prevent the ragtag Houthi militia from closing the Suez canal is an even stronger indication. Taiwan has access to much better anti-ship missiles (US Harpoons and Taiwan’s Hsung Feng) to deploy against a putative invasion force relying mostly on converted civilian ferries. It’s for this reason that recent discussion has focused on ill-defined notions of a blockade, while the idea of an invasion has been quietly abandoned.
Finally, apart from the chance to defend global democracy (a lost cause for now), the main benefit of the US alliance to Australia and New Zealand is the assumption that the US would defend us against an attack by a regional adversary. This assumption was obsolete even before Trump’s election. The only plausible candidate for an attack was Indonesia, and the only plausible reason was the appealing, but spurious idea that Indonesia’s (presumed) surplus population could occupy and exploit the vast empty spaces of Northern Australia.
That seems silly now. Apart from the fact that we have been on friendly terms with a democratic Indonesia for decades, the supposed rationale belongs to a past ear. Indonesia would lose more from the end of the Australian tourist trade in Bali than it would gain from seizing all the agricultural land north of a line from Cairns to Broome. But in the Suharto era, and with memories of World War II still fresh, fears of a conflict seemed reasonable enough.
Whether our fears were realistic or not, we could, before 2025, rely on the assumption that the US would come to our aid if needed. That’s no longer true. There is no reason to think that Trump would help us in a regional conflict, or that any successor regime will be much better.
In these circumstances, the alliance, and particularly the AUKUS agreement is a one way street. We pay the UK and US for submarines to be used in US operations (perhaps including wars against other democracies) and, if we are lucky, get some nice words in return. But that hasn’t stopped eager capitulation from the Australian government, which refused to sign a statement defending the International Criminal Court and was rewarded with a Trump endorsement of AUKUs.
As regards trade in goods, the main focus of Trump’s attacks so far, existing economic relationship will be harder to disentangle. The EU break with Russia after 2022 was painful enough, and the relationship there was shallower. But the lesson was that the countries and companies that got out quickly did better than those that tried to hang on and were eventually forced to sell for a pittance.
The US is big but but it only accounts for around 12 per cent of world goods trade. As the US is heads something approaching autarky, and the only response is to reroute the global economy to bypass it. We are already seeing this with the conclusion of EU trade deals such as Mercosur.
What matters for Europe, Australia and other democracies is US dominance of information technology, epitomized by Meta, Google, Amazon and Musk. This increasingly appears to be a castle built on sand. In the last couple of years we have seen repeated demonstrations that the apparent lock-ins achieved by these firms can be broken. Bluesky (and to a lesser extent Mastodon) has replaced X/Twitter for most of us, leaving it to MAGA bots and what we in Australia call “rustadons”. DeepSeek has shown that LLMs can be built at far lower cost than those of US oligarchs. And Substack has revived something similar to the old blogosphere of which CT is a remnant.
Most of these alternatives are US-based. But they provide the proof of concept. There’s nothing to stop any country from breaking with the US oligarchs and building LLMs and social media platforms of their own.
The world would be much better if Americans had chosen democracy over fascism. But a plurality of Americans have chosen fascism, and so far, there is no sign of turning back. Democracies will represent a minority of the world’s population and of global economic activity for the foreseeable future. But democracy has overcome bigger challenges in the past and prevailed.
John Quiggin 
John,
I am going to ask you some direct questions. I am very much hoping to get direct answers. First, let me state my position. I basically agree with your analysis as outlined above. I have one caveat or question. Can we ever hope that the USA will leave us alone to do our own thing? A supplementary question goes with that. Will our governments ever grow a spine anyway? It seems Trump is much more interested in bullying allies and trading partners than in do anything else (at all) in the international sphere (other than plundering the globe I guess).
Do you agree with, or disagree with, my analysis in “Trump has thrown out the global order”? That is where I predicted Trump might need to steal the mid-terms if his policies turn economically, pandemically, “climate-ly” and socially disastraous for the USA within two years. I think that quite likely. Things could crash very badly, very quickly. His policies are that bad. If the Trumpists is recognise this they will already have a plan. They may have that plan anyway. They will be leaving nothing to chance, or elections, from now on I would think. Are the Federal system and the states strong enough to resist this?
I agree with John’s optimistic take on Ukraine. Admittedly I have been wrong before on short-term battlefield prospects. I underestimated the fatalistic resilience of Russian soldiers, and ability to keep going with inferior equipment and commanders. But the basic argument for Ukrainian victory is unchanged.
Putin’s Bonapartist system is far more fragile than Soviet Communism, let alone democracy. It relies on the acquiescence rather than the commitment of ordinary Russians, sustained by nonstop fantasy propaganda on TV and exemplary repression rather than blanket police-state microsurveillance. The system is vulnerable to shocks, as the Prigozhin drama showed. .Accordingly Putin has not felt able to put Russia on a true war footing, as Ukraine has done. In particular there is no full mobilisation and Russian men have to be enticed to volunteer by large signup bonuses. Nor has he felt able to confiscate their phones, so the Russian web is full of horrible videos showing the appalling conditions and continuous heavy losses of men and equipment at the front. Ukrainian control of the skies is so great that drones are sent out in swarms to hunt down defenceless single soldiers and kill them with small grenades. Brainwashed into fear of “Nazi” cruelty, few take the option of surrendering to a drone.
Access to social media has not yet enabled organised mutiny, but first-hand news filters back to families and makes new recruitment steadily more difficult and expensive. Russia makes small gains in territory, but at massive cost: typically well over 1,000 casualties a day, and a steady drain on air defence, armoured and soft-skinned vehicles, and artillery.
Most of the public in Ukraine’s allies get their news from mass media biased towards heart-rending images of regular senseless attacks on Ukrainian civilians – the power grid and rail system stay operational in spite of ineffective attacks. Ukraine’s manpower problems and draft evasion are well-aired. Only aficionados like me seek out information on successful Ukrainian defensive operations, and deep drone and missile strikes on oil refineries, tank farms, airfields, ammunition dumps, and command posts, which Russia is powerless to stop. One refinery set on fire was in Omsk, 2,000 km east of Moscow: this must have been sabotage rather than a drone. Ukraine can keep these up indefinitely, until the logistics at the front break down completely.
Hegseth said today that the USA was deprioritising Europe and opined that return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders was “unrealistic”. He and Trump can’t have it both ways. If the USA is walking away from NATO, it doesn’t have a veto on its European members. I’ve pointed out before, that the diplomatic rule of consensus is a lot weaker than it looks at first sight, since the (n-1) other countries can always reassemble in the next room and adopt the policy you are trying to veto. NATO would be more complicated than this to unwind, but the same principle holds. “Very well, together” may be forced on Europe. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2002/05/09/verywellalone.jpg
JW,
I think the entirety of global civilization is fragile now. Some parts are worse than others and Russia certainly fits that bill. My, admittedly amateur, researches suggest to me that the UK and USA are heading for comprehensive economic and societal collapses. These collapses seem likely to occur in very short order unless their governments and oligarchs radically change direction or have it changed for them.
Trump’s assault on governance looks likely to completely destroy functioning Federal government in the USA. All fifteen US executive departments, except perhaps for the Department of Defence, are being sabotaged or destroyed. The chances of a Department of Defense remaining standing, without the other 14 Departments also continuing robust and functional, is nil.
I tried to type more here but kept losing my text. This wordpress system is impossible! Has anyone invented a worse editor? Ever? I very much doubt it.
Iko: a non-pro tip. I always compose comments and FB posts of more than a few lines in a proper text editor (LibreOffice), then copy and paste. This allows auto backup every n minutes (I use 5), which means I don’t lose work in a power cut or system crash. I also have access to much better spelling dictionaries. Archiving is much simpler too. The same holds for letters and emails in Spanish. as Google Translate is much better than the alternatives.
JW,
You are right. I will try to make that a habit in future and not think “this little post will be easy enough”.
Now that the Kremlin is dictating US policy it seems pointless to continue with AUKUS.
I hope I am wrong, but if someone wanted a terrorist attack to occur in the US, it seems like we are seeing exactly those types of preparatory moves. Sidelining careerists at the NSC. Putting an amateur in charge of intelligence. Trying to bleep with the FBI.
I hope that whoever it is – is the president a puppet? – realizes that we may not “unite” next time. And there will be no third term, regardless (if that is the idea). It isn’t just our federal bar that is standing up.
Again, I’d like to be wrong. I suppose, it could just be incompetence. I am starting to think it may be worse than that. I mean, clearly there is evidence of past disloyalty – but yet again, sometimes he backs down quickly once people are upset about any particular outrage – providing an element of randomness. (And also, there is what Reich said.)
So, I just don’t know.
Iko, I share your gloom. In particular, I think Trump will steal all elections from now on, whether or not he is in a position to win them fairly
N,
I don’t think Trump is a puppet. In a way, that makes everything worse. It makes the USA’s objective situation far worse. If it were an enemy clearly foreign, the US could deal with both it and the treasonous domestic party and be united in doing so. A domestic enemy of this sort, in the brain and heart of the system and holding sway over the minds and emotions of most Americans, is a far more insidious and perilous thing. The nation becomes the equivalent of an individual shot through with rapidly metastasizing brain cancer, heart cancer and multi-organ cancer all over the place all at the same time.
Trump is a gang leader like Putin and Xi. They see the world in terms of gang territories. Each wants or says he wants “peace” and will offer “peace” : by which they each mean free sway to exploit peoples in their own territories and guarantees that the other gangs won’t try to muscle in on these territories. That’s a peace almost certain to fail at some point and erupt in gang war.
Europe without America
Trump at Davos on January 23: “I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago..“ https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/remarks-by-president-trump-at-the-world-economic-forum/
Since Trump, Vance and Hegseth have all made it clear that the USA is no longer bound by the NATO treaty, it’s not clear why the European members should pay attention to this unsolicited advice. They have in short order to rebuild their collective security minus the USA, and spend what they need to do it. There is no reason why they would need to spend anything like 5% of GDP for this.
The complete list of major military threats Europe needs to guard against is as follows:
1. Russian autocracy and imperialism.
There is no point 2. Jihadi terrorism, cyberwarfare and climate disruption are real securitty dangers, but cannot be dealt with by conventional armed forces. The USA may conceivably get itself INTo shooting wars with China over Taiwan or with Iran over Israel, butt Europe has no reason to join in. Middle Eastern oil is fast becoming unimportant, in a buyers’ market of shrinking demand. There is no appetite for intervention in Africa’s civil wars, beyond the quixotic low-key French struggle for influence in the Sahel, in the poorest countries on Earth.
Russia, in case you hadn’t noticed, is tied up in a very costly war of its own choosing with Ukraine. It has lost a large part of the equipment it began with, and struggles unsuccessfully to replace, and an enormous number of soldiers. https://babel.ua/en/news/115436-general-staff-russia-lost-another-1-180-soldiers-and-11-tanks The threat it represents to other European countries such as Poland, Finland and is far less than in 2022. You could make a strong case that non-Ukraine defence spending could be cut, not raised. Why does the Royal Navy need aircraft carriers?
My suggestion is to forget about the total volume of defence spending and concentrate on the one real problem, arming Ukraine to defend itself. Initially, the urgent need is to replace lost US military aid. The 2024 US package was $61.3 bn, and Trump is obviously not going to renew it. BTW, MAGA suckers, most of this was spent in-country on US arms, creating manufacturing Real Jobs with Lockheed and General Dynamics. Europe will shift as much of this as possible to its own arms industry, to BAE, Thales, Nammo and Rheinmetall. American jobs will be lost.
What are the magnitudes here? US nominal GDP is about $27 trn, the EU’s $20 trn. Add the UK and Norway, solid allies of Ukraine, and you get $24 trn. $61.3 bn is 0.25% of $24 trn. Add non-military aid and an increase for luck, say $100 bn a year. This makes 0.42% of GDP. Non-Ukraine defence spending can be left flat. This all needs to be sharpened up, but at worst Europe is looking at an increase in defence spending of 0.5% of GDP.
OF course we can afford this. Tomorrow.
Vance and Trump have made it clear, the US will partner with Russia to divide up Ukraine. The US will then leave NATO to themselves, Russia will then pick off smaller states while the others act to protect themselves, just like WW2.
Sound far fetched? Trump has identified his allies as being Putin and XI, criminals and racists, authoritarians and fascists and his enemies are “liberals”.
… and equally as tragic… that was also clear before the election.
🇺🇦
The bromance between Trump and Putin will go about as well as the one between Hitler and Stalin.
I’d be surprised if it does. Going by the 1st term precedent, the bromances between Trump and… well… any undesirable dictator/tyrant/totalitarian thug/murderous monarch (with something to offer) just seems to get more cosy with time in office.
Looking at the USA/Russia entente over Ukraine, Trump is re-establishing the ancient and venerable tradition of imperial rights over middle and minor nations and peoples. These rights will be exercised unilaterally by force or by empires colluding and dividing spoils in mutual operations. There is no way any middle or minor nation or people can ever be safe in this kind of world. Australia is not safe even as the most servile and abject tributary vassal state. We will be invaded and/or stripped of everything. It’s only a matter of time.
There will be no ultimate spoils for anyone, anyway. The imperials will destroy us and then destroy themselves by destroying the environment. Climate change has hit the very cusp of the runaway stage. The growth of pandemics has hit the the very cusp of the runaway stage. There are just two of many issues.
To add to my comment above, I have been trying to work out how Trump’s position could make geostrategic and plutocratic sense, in the Trumpverse I mean.