Nato’s power is waning and a new world order over security is emerging

When old orders pass, it is rarely clear what the new order will be. It is more than three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and coming up to 30 years since the Soviet Union passed into history. Aside from hailing Europe as “whole and free”, with the unification of Germany and the integration of the former Eastern bloc states into the European Union and Nato, many might observe that little more has actually happened than the shift of the east-west border further east. The wider security implications flowing from the sudden demise of the second superpower, coinciding with the growing assertiveness of China, are still not fully clear.

That may be starting to change. One trend that seems to be accelerating is the redefining of the US role. From his election to his dramatic departure from office, Donald Trump was widely seen as an anomaly, to put it mildly. But that seems less and less true as his presidency recedes into the past. Europe’s hopes that his Democrat successor, Joe Biden – a political veteran who forged his career in the shadow of the Cold War – would live up to his Atlanticist credentials have so far been frustrated.

Although he came to power professing that “America is back” – by which he appeared to mean back in Europe and back as a world leader – Biden’s actions have not lived up to that billing. He has done little, if anything, to soften Trump’s hard line on China; tensions with Beijing over Taiwan are only growing. And while he struck a collegiate note both at the G7 summit in Cornwall earlier this year and at Nato, he gave the allies little, if no, notice of his decision to honour Trump’s agreement on ending the 20-year US involvement in Afghanistan.