Here’s some boring news – although when I say “boring” I mean utterly different from social media clickbait and sensational tabloid newspapers, but far more important. In American news reporting there’s an old saying: “if it bleeds – it leads”. This insight from the 1890s originated with the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. He noticed that shocking crime stories sell more newspapers. That principle guides some TV channels and social media sites today.
So, instead, here’s some superficially dull news as an antidote to the convulsions, conflicts and self-inflicted confusion in what is a very uncertain world.
First, the spring meeting of the World Bank Group (WBG) in Washington DC, resulted in a new report “Anchoring Stability and Promoting Balanced Growth.” Exciting? Well, perhaps not but this sober report aims at solving problems, rather than creating them. That’s an antidote to the Trump turmoil.
A former China director of the International Monetary Fund, the US economist Eswar Prasad, noted that “the Trump administration has left little doubt about its distaste for practically every multilateral institution, including the IMF and the World Bank, because it views these institutions’ recommendations and policies as not always perfectly aligned with narrowly defined American interests”.
But so what, if the IMF and WBG get on with their work? Then around the same time as these Washington meetings, in London British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The headlines, once again, were sober not sensational. The UK government reported: “they had a long and productive discussion focused on a range of issues including Ukraine, energy security, the global economy and defence”.
Important? Yes. Exciting? Not so far, but US President Donald Trump showing “distaste”, as Mr Prasad puts it, for multilateral institutions makes headlines, while meetings between representatives of national governments and international organisations makes policies to try to make our world better and safer.
Then there’s the Brics, the countries based around a diverse group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, UAE, Iran and Indonesia. The Brics keep going too. The UN? Well, the realignment of the US with Russia and North Korea against most traditional US allies over Ukraine was a shock, but guess what? The UN still functions. The World Health Organisation?
Yes, still going, despite cuts in US funding. However, rather like the Trump dismantling of USAID, America withdrawing from helping the world’s poor and sick means much less influential US soft power. A “coalition of the willing” as the British like to say, still cares about the health of people in less well-off areas of the world. Nato? Yes, still going.
Mr Trump’s lack of enthusiasm has re-energised Europe and Canada. The G7? Ditto. It was once in the G8 but Russia was suspended after its invasion of Crimea in 2014. The G7 continues. The European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank? Their influence is if anything increasing as Trumpland shrinks its international influence.
The Dean of Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government Ngaire Woods has focused on some of these encouraging signs. She leads a foreign policy review of global impact for the UK government. In a recent conversation for the This Is Not A Drill podcast I discussed with Professor Woods the thought-provoking article she published in Foreign Affairs magazine.
She argues that the world is adjusting to “less America” and will survive the inevitable dislocation. Professor Woods points out that many countries engage in highly significant co-operative efforts without much US support anyway.
In her article, she pointed to the World Bank’s lending agency, the International Development Association, as an example. The IDA provides funds to poor countries. The US contribution is the largest at just under 15 per cent of the total but Japan is contributing almost the same amount while European nations together contribute 50 per cent.
In Britain, there remains a lingering nostalgia for a “special relationship” with the US based on kinship, ideological closeness and common interests, but that relationship is a lot less “special” right now.
Many other countries, especially poor ones, have benefited from US engagement in the wider world too but we will all readjust eventually. Commentators point out that unless there is massive constitutional change or a coup, Mr Trump will leave the White House by January 2029 and then another re-set is possible. True, up to a point.
But it’s absurd to think that in the 2030s the US would miraculously snap back from the Trump disruption and return to the more traditional type of American engagement of the past 80 years. There is therefore little prospect of going back to what we might think of as “traditional” relations with the quixotic superpower.
But cheer up. What is happening is not just a test of the US. It’s a test of the rest of the world too. What matters is our competence, our hard work, positivity and co-operation. That story of competence may not be as exciting as the Trump clickbait and thunder, but it’s essential.
