After a week in which US President Donald Trump raised the prospect of economic – and even military – threats against European countries unless they acquiesced to his demand to take over Greenland, and then backed down after talks with Nato produced a “framework” deal, there can be no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was right.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said in a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. “The old order is not coming back.”
Mr Carney echoed a statement the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, made last year. “The West as we knew it no longer exists,” she said. In April 2025, that may have been a little precipitous. Once an American President refuses to rule out using force to take the sovereign territory of a Nato ally (even if he later rules it out), we can agree with Ms Von der Leyen. This is so norm-shatteringly abrupt and aggressive that the “West”, as it had previously existed, is clearly over.
My question now is: will we miss it?
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