There’s a term that gets floated a lot in conversations and articles about foreign policy. The term, of course, is “free world,” and more specifically, America’s role, and especially the American president’s role, in leading the free world.
It’s a term I’ve used myself any number of times over the years, and without hesitation. For my entire life, America has been the leader of the free world, and its president has gladly taken on that responsibility.
Does it still apply? That’s being questioned now, after U.S. President Donald Trump left European leaders rattled after his recent visit to the continent.
READ MORE: Donald Trump lashes out at Germany after Angela Merkel questions U.S. reliability as an ally
Trump refused to explicitly endorse the collective defence provision at the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty, which is the basis of the NATO alliance. He called out his NATO allies for their chronic underfunding of their armed forces. And he apparently refused to align himself (and the United States) with the other six nations of the G7 on key policies, including the Paris climate change agreement. This led German chancellor Angela Merkel to publicly muse that Europe may no longer be able to count on the support of nations — the United States, clearly — it once had considered a given.
Has the United States therefore abdicated its leadership of the free world, by which, of course, we mean the allied democracies? (The free world doesn’t overlap perfectly with NATO, but the terms can be used in a loosely interchangeable way for our purposes here.)
I’m not convinced that it has — but I share Merkel’s alarm. I actually think the president is right about Europe (and Canada) underfunding their military, and I’ve said so here before. I also think the president was right to kick some butts in Europe; every U.S. president since Harry Truman has wanted the allies to do more to contribute to collective Western defence and every president since Harry Truman has been disappointed. Trump was justified in going in and sending the signal that things are different now.
That’s not a blanket endorsement of what he did in Europe; it’s all too possible, even likely, that he botched the attempt. Such seems to be his way. I’m just saying it was time to try something else and that abandoning the status quo might ruffle European feathers, but the status quo wasn’t sustainable.
WATCH: Donald Trump lectures Canada, other NATO members to up defence spending
So where does that leave us, then? Even if America will still lead the free world, perhaps after Trump has left the Oval Office under whatever circumstances, the free world still needs a leader now. Trump doesn’t seem interested. Merkel is held up as a possible new leader. So is France’s Emmanuel Macron. As is our own Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
I’m honestly not sure how widespread that sentiment is.
WATCH: Trudeau treads carefully as Europe pulls away from U.S.
As a Canadian, I’m obviously biased in the way I read news. I’ve seen the social media memes and read the flattering New York Times and magazine think pieces arguing that Canada is now a more traditional Western leader than the U.S. There’s a certain surface-level truth of this.
Canada is still in theoretical support of NATO, of the trans-Atlantic alliance, of freer and fuller international trade. Once upon a time, these were simply part of being in the free world. Now they qualify one for a leadership role, which is alarming but seemingly true. Canada, and France and Germany, might indeed inherit the moral leadership of the free world until and unless America sorts out its own current political issues.
But here’s the problem with moral leadership: as nice as it is, it doesn’t take you very far.
READ MORE: Angela Merkel says Europe can no longer completely rely on U.S., Great Britain
I hesitate to refer to Stalin when promoting freedom, but he was right to note, during the Second World War, that the Pope might be a moral authority but he commanded no army divisions. Soft power, or moral leadership, is useful in those forums where it works: when you’re dealing with nice people with similar values. But hard power — a powerful military, a powerful economy, a powerful alliance system, and effective diplomatic and intelligence agencies — is useful in every forum.
The French have hard power. So do the Germans. Neither has quite so much as they should — again, Trump isn’t wrong about the underfunding of the allied militaries. But France and Germany have the scale, for lack of a better term, to effectively wield global power. At the very least, they’d be able to protect themselves from foreign threats, and even project power abroad. Those capabilities don’t fully exist today, but they’re within reasonable reach, if the European powers try.
READ MORE: Time for an ‘honest’ list of defence costs, says Marc Garneau
Canada? Not so much. We don’t have enough military power to effectively patrol our own landmass, air approaches and coastal areas, let alone adequately defend them. We can contribute token forces to missions abroad, or sustain larger efforts for short periods. But our means are modest, at best, and as National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan recently noted, even those capabilities we currently have are atrophying. Status quo funding, he said, won’t even preserve our status quo capability.
READ MORE: Federal budget 2017’s lack of defence spending draws fire
This is not a given. Canada is a rich country. We can do better, if we choose to. We can’t lead the free world on our own, but we can see to our own needs at home and become more able to contribute meaningfully, as a leader if not the leader of the West, abroad.
It would cost money and time and effort. But it’s worth doing, and would have been worth doing even if Trump was an affable, easily satisfied ally. It’s been worth doing for years, in fact. What have we been waiting for?
Matt Gurney is host of The Morning Show on Toronto’s Talk Radio AM640 and a columnist for Global News.
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