In Davos, Switzerland, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was asked whether he had anything to say to “Europeans who are concerned about the messages from the White House around Greenland.” Newsom advised them to “have a backbone,” reminding everyone that “it is time to have principles.” Astonished by the servility hitherto displayed by those concerned Europeans, Newsom expressed his regret that he had not brought “a bunch of kneepads to all the world leaders.” His emphatic tone made him sound almost sincere as regards his strong convictions and highly principled stance, though it is always hard to trust the sincerity of someone who can still talk about their “love for Israel” with a certain political calculation in mind, not least in a conversation with a fanatic Zionist activist pretending to be a pundit.
In any case, Newsom was right to point out the “pathetic” nature of Europe’s complete servitude, at least until its leaders realized the gravity of the situation, when, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron complained in Davos about the recent “resurfacing” of “imperial ambitions,” clearly referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s appetite for Greenland, among his other demands, which “openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe.” Aside from the question of when Macron will eventually walk back his comments, as has been his custom for a very long time, there is another relevant question. Did it really have to take a hostile U.S. takeover of Greenland for Macron to discover that, after all, the U.S. knows only “the law of the strongest” and no other?
The fact is that Macron, like many others in similar positions, knew this all along. For him, the law of the strongest has never been a problem in and of itself. It became one only when its implications started to go against Europe’s “interests.” Was it not Macron who enthusiastically celebrated the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro not that long ago? And, according to his private correspondence with Trump, he is still on board with “doing great things on Iran.” (Last year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described those great things as the West’s “dirty work.”)
Nevertheless, in his address, Macron rejected the approach of “passively accepting the law of the strongest,” which would inevitably lead to “vassalization.” He also rejected the approach of “adopting a purely moral posture,” which would mean “marginalization.” Between “vassalization” and “marginalization,” there seemed to be no middle ground, so Macron resorted to the banal slogan of “strengthening cooperation.” As usual, there was no explanation of what that would actually amount to.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, on the other hand, was much more candid and straightforward. He admitted that Canada and Europe knew what Macron also knew but pretended to have just discovered. “We knew that the story of the international rules-based order was partially false,” Carney told the audience, “that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or victim.” He confessed that Canada and Europe nonetheless went along with this “fiction” because it was simply “useful.” Unfortunately, however, “this bargain” no longer worked, so a different course had to be adopted.
Carney’s warning against the false hope that “compliance will buy safety” is indeed noteworthy. Yet noncompliance, if confined to the narrow domain of economic interests, would mean very little. Canada and Europe can rebalance supply chains, harden their industrial policies, or seek “strategic autonomy” in various other ways, all while continuing to comply where compliance really matters: in wars they enthusiastically finance, in sanctions regimes they enforce with doctrinal discipline, and so on. If they are serious about “decoupling” from the empire, they need to prove that they are capable of having truly independent foreign policies. Imposing sanctions on Israel for its genocide would be a good start on this front, albeit at the risk of “marginalization.”
