Terry Glavin: As Trump’s America steps back, Xi’s China moves in

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The October 7 savagery set off a chain reaction that began with the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and ultimately led to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon and the current U.S.-Israeli war on the Iranian regime, which kicked off on Feb. 28. It’s a war that Iran has fought with missiles and drones launched at Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and with a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

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With an ambiguous war aim, no advance planning with NATO allies, no apparent exit strategy and rapidly declining public support among Americans, the war has set in motion a myriad of wildly variable repercussions, including inflation and the spectre of recession in Asia and Latin America. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, says the disruptions have rapidly evolved into the worst energy crisis the world has ever faced.

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Throughout it all, Xi Jinping’s China has done quite well. Beijing has managed to carry on mostly undisturbed in its role as Russia’s primary guarantor and financier in the Ukraine war and the Khomeinists’ cornerstone foreign money supplier, purchasing at least 80 per cent of Iran’s oil and pumping billions of dollars a year into the coffers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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Nevertheless, China has managed to present itself as a paragon of collaborative partnerships and rule-following trade practices, even as Beijing dumps its overproduction of electric vehicles into world markets and deepens its espionage, cyber-sabotage and transnational repression. The Trump administration’s policy of imposing stiff tariffs on allies and adversaries alike has only served to push dozens of states deeper into China’s orbit.

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Another key inflection point: the “strategic partnership” Prime Minister Carney concluded with Beijing in January. Like Spain and Serbia, and like Hungary before Viktor Orbán’s recent trouncing in the polls, Canada is giving the impression of wanting to be in every camp, all at once.

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With a focus of projecting power abroad over the long term and encircling Taiwan in the short term, China has more than doubled its military spending over the past 15 years. In its rush to develop a blue-water navy, the Peoples Liberation Army intends to launch six new aircraft carriers over the next decade.

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Ukraine has struggled to hold onto its sovereignty at the cost of an estimated 15,000 civilians killed and more than 40,000 wounded in the Kremlin’s relentless, indiscriminate attacks. The Trump administration doesn’t even pretend to side with Ukraine anymore, having halted virtually all military aid.

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The White House is allowing Ukraine’s NATO allies and partners to buy billions worth of military hardware for Ukraine’s war effort from American arms manufacturers, but the U.S. no longer contributes anything of consequence. Since Trump’s election, according to the Kiel Institute for World Economy, the U.S. contribution has dropped by 99 per cent.

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The author David French is an astute conservative observer of the cultural and political dysfunctions that have enfeebled “the West” in recent years. He’s an evangelical Christian from Alabama. Writing in the New York Times this week, French got straight to the astonishing new reality:

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“No nation can match American might, but for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defence of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington. It doesn’t beat in London or Paris or Berlin or Ottawa, either. It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.”

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That point was not absent from King Charles’ address to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. Referring to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “We answered the call together — as our people have done so for more than a century, shoulder to shoulder, through two world wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security.”

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What followed must have been an awkward moment for President Trump, and perhaps especially for Vice-president J.D. Vance, who recently said his “proudest” moment in office was the administration’s decision to sever military aid to Kyiv. King Charles said: “That same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people.”

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God save the King.

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National Post

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