Trump has incentivized many other alliances to exist, without Washington, the European Union’s external trade architecture being the clearest case.
It is no secret that America’s alliances are in tatters after a second round of battering under Trump, and will be even worse after another two years of a loss of confidence, reliability, and legitimacy. It is a wonder that America retains any of its alliances at this time and is questionable whether the plethora of alliances that existed with Washington in 2016 will ever be replicable again.
Yet, Trump has incentivized many other alliances to exist, without Washington—the European Union’s external trade architecture being the clearest case. The EU-Mercosur interim agreement entered provisional application in May, Brussels closed negotiations with Australia in March, and with India and Indonesia prior to that. Malaysia and the Philippines are queued up behind them. Most significantly, the European Commission is pursuing a framework arrangement with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with which it already holds bilateral agreements covering 10 of 12 members. It is a second rule-making centre being assembled by parties who have concluded that the World Trade Organization will not deliver and that American trade policy cannot be relied upon.
Asia’s intramural relationships tell the same story, more quietly. Tokyo and Seoul have managed the most durable normalization in decades—three leader-level meetings since Takaichi took office and an explicit agreement to quarantine historical and territorial disputes from everything else. India-ASEAN trade reached $128 billion in the last fiscal year, with a free trade review accelerating. None of these arrangements included Washington nor depends on an American signature, which is precisely why none of them is at risk.
One tier down sit the relationships that have survived by converting American commitments into another’s domestic law. For example, South Korea did not simply announce an investment package; it passed the Korea-U.S. Strategic Investment Act, in force since 18 June, to administer one. Japan’s framework runs through an executive order and a memorandum of understanding with an approval committee attached. Australia has appropriated 8.5 billion Australian dollars to the Osborne shipyard, money that now has a construction schedule and a workforce behind it. European allies raised defence spending by nearly 20% in real terms in a single year, and the Hague pledge has been translated into national budget lines that will outlast any communiqué.
That said, there are plenty of bilateral arrangements that continue to rest upon a communiqué, with The Quad being the cautionary example. India’s chairmanship year closed without producing a leaders’ summit; New Delhi was reduced to floating a foreign ministers’ meeting dressed up as something more. The May ministerial in Delhi announced a fresh slate of initiatives without auditing what the previous slate delivered. That is not a grouping in decline so much as one substituting activity for accountability.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait have all reviewed their American financial commitments this year, including whether force majeure can be invoked against them—even as Abu Dhabi insists it is exceeding its obligations. Both things are true. A relationship built on non-binding pledges gets repriced the moment conditions change. And the USMCA, the agreement that was supposed to be the model of institutionalized North American integration, now faces annual relitigation through 2036 after Washington declined to renew it on 1 July. Mexico and Canada both wanted the 16-year extension.
And other multilateral arrangements which did not previously exist have been created, the best example being the mutual defence pact between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey. All three recognized that they can no longer rely on America. At least such a pact is preferable to one that would put China in America’s seat with these and other nations.
Two caveats are worth of mention. First, what survives is thinner than what it replaced. The Australia, UK, US (AUKUS) relationship held—but the revised pathway swaps a newly built submarine for a third second-hand American boat, trading decades of reactor life for deliverability. Continuity was purchased by lowering the price.
Second, none of this is a rival bloc forming. The EU, Japan, Korea, India and Australia are not (yet) seeking to build an alternative order; they are building redundancy. That may be the more consequential outcome. A rival coalition would be legible, and Washington knows how to compete with one. What is actually emerging is a thickening lattice of arrangements that simply do not require American participation in order to function—and which, having been built during a period of American unpredictability, will not be unbuilt. Alliances are not lost in a single decision. They are lost when partners discover they can route around you, and find the detour tolerable or preferable.
*Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions and author of the forthcoming book “The AI Insurgency”, to be published in September.
