On the first day of the United Nations general assembly this week, two world leaders outlined competing visions for the future. Donald Trump’s speech was disturbingly familiar to those he’s given before: a litany of false boasts and odd tangents, peppered with grim military threats against a variety of nation states. Discussing his seven-month war with Iran, he mused over whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly”.
In Trump’s eyes, the world is there to be ruled – and ruled only by the US, whose economy is “the envy of the world” and military is “the most powerful on Earth”.
A couple of hours later, Emmanuel Macron took to the podium to offer an alternative. In a full-throated defence of international law, multilateralism and the rules-based order, the French president said we were living in a “new era of barbaric acts”. He directly criticised Russia and Israel, but much of it was clearly aimed at Trump. “They say might is right … but we will not yield,” he argued. “We cannot simply accept this new order of impunity which some are trying to erect … Do we want to live under … the law of the jungle or do we want to live in a civilised international society?”
Importantly, he also acknowledged the west’s “permanent temptation to espouse double standards”. “How many times have we heard that people’s sovereignty has value in Europe, but if we look at the Middle East and Africa, it is less valuable,” he asked. “No, that is unacceptable … A life is a life. Peace and security are indivisible, and everyone has a right to them.”
Over the past decade, Macron has consistently been one of the only western leaders with a morally intelligent analysis of what Europe and the world should look like. As Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have ushered us into an age of impunity, he has defended the rules-based order and, in recent months, been at the forefront of attempts to forge new alliances to support the crumbling old ones.
He has pushed the idea of European strategic autonomy more than anyone else, understanding that while Europe is an economic power, it is yet to fully realise its potential as either a military or geopolitical force. During Trump’s first term, Macron was the only major leader willing to publicly acknowledge that Nato could no longer rely on the US, leaving the alliance all but dead.
And yet the big speeches have rarely led to any substantial change. His ambitious call for EU reform in 2017 went nowhere, in essence scotched by Angela Merkel, who praised his “passion” and “verve” but failed to back the substance. Likewise, in New York this week, while his analysis was sound, the solutions were slight.
This isn’t necessarily all Macron’s fault. He came to power in May 2017 as the new world order was crumbling. The EU was in crisis: one of its largest members had just voted to leave, while the remaining member states were still fatally split over the fallout from the eurozone crisis earlier in the decade and the migration wave in the summer of 2015. France’s two biggest European allies have been on the slide during his time in office. He has had to work with three German chancellors, the most recent two less popular than their predecessors, and is now on his sixth British prime minister.
More urgently, Trump had taken office four months earlier, signalling the start of the break up of the rules-based order that had guided the west since the end of the second world war. Had Macron had the chance to work with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel at the peak of her popularity and a British prime minister committed to the EU, things might have turned out differently.
Macron’s domestic woes have increased his impotence on the world stage. He has in effect been a lame duck for the past two years, since his disastrous snap election in 2024 left him without a majority.
But his speech in New York, his final UN address before he steps down as president next spring, may have a more lasting impact. It certainly set the tone for the week. Over the following days, a procession of leaders of the so-called middle powers defended the principles of the UN and offered coded criticisms of Trump. Many of those who would have been scared of speaking out last year feel more emboldened now.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, warned that “the UN mission cannot be entrusted solely to the great powers, or the biggest countries, or even the loudest voices alone”, while Spain’s PM, Pedro Sánchez, said he sought to “defend what so many are trying to destroy” and called for countries to come together to fight “political actors and governments that want to take us back to a dark past”.
The middle powers are united in their opposition. The question is whether they can agree on what they’re for. The events of the past few weeks suggest that process is under way. New alliances based on values, not geography or size, are being formed – a reinvention of multilateralism, rather than a simple defence of the old model.
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So far this month, the EU and Canada have discussed the idea of “associate membership”, while the UK has formed a new coalition of middle powers to impose sanctions targeting Israel’s unlawful occupation of the West Bank.
Another new group was created at the UN this week, with Finland and Norway launching a call for an international body to oversee the safety of AI models. It is a direct challenge to Trump, who has called concerns about AI safety a “hoax” – nonetheless, 27 world leaders signed up, including Macron, Canada’s Mark Carney, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Albanese.
What ties all this together is the idea of “values-based realism”, an argument first put forward by the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, and echoed this week by Carney, who arguably lit the “middle powers” spark in Davos earlier this year when he spoke of the “rupture” in the world order caused by Trump. The new world Carney, Macron and others are trying to build will be one of different, sometimes overlapping alliances of like-minded states.
There will be an ongoing question here for Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband. Which of these groups do they join, which do they try to form themselves and which do they politely decline? Despite Burnham’s desire to lead the push for new global AI standards, the UK has so far not joined the Finnish AI group, perhaps for fear of invoking Trump’s wrath. Another issue emerged this week: how to respond to Trump’s desire to invite Putin to the G20?
Each middle power will face the same conundrum: when to fight back and when to sit on the sidelines. At least now the middle powers have understood that fighting back is an option.
