The West, like Biden, is in the wars. But the architects of peace are mobilising

Winston Churchill’s most famous postwar speech is remembered for declaring the descent of the Soviet “iron curtain”, but that was not the title of his speech or its main message. It’s a phrase that has crowded out his guidance for our times.

The great wartime leader spoke of the “shadow which, alike in the west and in the east, falls upon the world”, much as the shadow of ambitious tyrants falls on the west and the east today, with Vladimir Putin in the west and Xi Jinping in the east.

Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:

But, said Churchill, “I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable; still more that it is imminent”. Why? “Because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future.”

This wouldn’t happen through indolence but only by building the “sinews of peace”, he said. This was Churchill’s most urgent message to his American audience on that day in 1946.

In fact, it was the title of his speech. The sinews of peace – a renewed and enlarged Western alliance – were strong enough to prevent war between the major powers for an extraordinary 73 years. The era known as the Cold War is also known as the “long peace”.

But can Western democracies today build “sinews of peace” while their political leaders are befuddled, besieged or bamboozled? While extremists sow angry division and seek to destroy democracy itself?

The democratic decay is most obvious in the most important Western power. The US president is under frantic and furious attack by his own party. The Democratic Party is suffering a crisis of confidence in its own leader, Joe Biden.

For 16 days continuously, the Democrats have had a collective panic attack in full public view. The spectacle has dominated every news cycle. Panic rarely produces sound outcomes and this one is no different. A critical mass of the Democratic Party has declared its own president demented and unfit for office.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles meets US President Joe Biden at the NATO summit in Washington, DC.Credit: @RichardMarlesMP

This is a big call at any time. But three months and 25 days before a presidential election, it’s bizarre. The Democratic hand-wringers and bed-wetters are carrying on as if they’ve only just noticed that Biden is an old guy.

He’s been confused for many months, even years. It was in February that he related publicly stories of fresh conversations with European leaders who’d been long dead. Now he’s confused his Vice-President Kamala Harris with his rival, Donald Trump. Not an easy mistake to make.

Is this worse than Trump, who this year confused Republican Nikki Haley, his former UN ambassador, with Nancy Pelosi, arch-Democrat hate figure? He’s mixed up Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Not an easy mistake to make.

Trump has committed at least as many gaffes and idiocies. He’s claimed that American shoppers need to produce voter ID to buy a loaf of bread, and that whales wash ashore “because of the wind”. And Trump has taken campaign audiences on a long rumination on the dilemma of choosing to die by shark attack or electrocution by the electric battery of a sinking boat. Twice.

The difference? The Republicans’ MAGA crowd overlooks Trump’s flaws; they stick with their guy and defend him against attack. The Democrats’ elites, on the other hand, go into paroxysms of excruciating self-doubt; they amplify Biden’s flaws and look to lynch him.

Donald Trump has committed at least as many gaffes and idiocies as Biden. But his welded-on MAGA mob doesn’t care.Credit: AP

Biden is determined to contest the election; the Democrats have no way of forcing him out; and no compelling candidate to replace him.

The result is a protracted act of self-sabotage. Trump doesn’t need to say a thing. The Democrats are generating all the headlines against themselves. And Democrat panic is feeding media hysteria, all unaided by Trump.

The Democrat frenzy is predicated on the idea that Biden’s debate performance made him unelectable. But they forgot to consult the actual electors. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published on Friday (Australian time) found: “Biden and former president Donald Trump [are] in a dead heat in the contest for the popular vote, with both candidates receiving 46 per cent support among registered voters. Those numbers are nearly identical to the results of an ABC-Ipsos poll in April.”

It’s a contrast that should humble America’s political class, and the Democrats in particular. Their assessment of the debate’s effect was dead wrong. The voters either didn’t notice, didn’t care, or had already made up their minds. Biden’s impulse was the right one – shrug off his debate performance as a bad night and move on.

Much as Trump has done. In the meantime, Trump continues to threaten the existence of the US as a democratic republic; he refuses to commit to accepting the results of the November election.

And in Western Europe, the dominant political trend is the rise of the far right. The far right generally has a tolerance or sympathy for racist, fascist and anti-democratic policies. While they’ve made serious inroads in France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden, the crown jewels are almost within reach:

“For a far-right takeover in Europe, Germany is the biggest prize,” writes Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the strongest party in three German states that will hold elections this [northern] fall.”

Britain is marching to the beat of a different drum with the election of Keir Starmer’s Labour. With that exception, the essential nations that uphold the Western alliance are all flirting with politics that move them closer to Vladimir Putin than to Winston Churchill.

While the American leadership is befuddled and Western Europe’s besieged, Australia’s is merely bamboozled. Most notably, Anthony Albanese was seriously outwitted by Peter Dutton in the campaign for the Voice. But Dutton bamboozled him over something as simple as this week’s overseas trip.

For two years, the opposition reliably criticised “Airbus Albo” or “Anthony Overseases” for travelling to excess. He should stay home attending to the problems of Australians in Australia, went the cry.

So when Albanese was invited to this week’s NATO summit in Washington, he declined and stayed home. Dutton immediately thundered that the prime minister was irresponsible to duck a vital meeting that advances Australia’s national security. Of course, Dutton was in Washington this week at the Australian American Leadership Dialogue while Albanese stayed home. Bamboozled.

How can this unserious, sometimes unhinged, ragtag of democracies possibly attend to something as serious as the building the “sinews of peace” to prevent another colossal global war?

Hard to believe, perhaps, this is exactly what they’ve been doing. Beneath the radar of media attention, mostly. For instance, the US Congress and administration this week made some essential advances in implementing the AUKUS agreement.

Interestingly, the leading Congressional advocate for AUKUS is Democrat Joe Courtney. Even as he was caught up in the Democrats’ agonising over Biden’s future this week, Courtney still managed the unglamorous work of drafting enabling regulations and negotiating extra US spending to make AUKUS happen.

And, in the eye of the Democrat storm, Joe Biden managed to host a focused and effective NATO summit. It was striking for three main reasons. First, it pledged serious new support for Ukraine – at least $US43 billion ($63.6 billion) over the next year. Australia, though not a NATO member, announced another $250 million worth of munitions and gear for Ukraine.

“We can and will defend every inch of NATO territory, and we will do it together,” Biden declared. Among other developments, four of the European members of NATO agreed jointly to manufacture long-range cruise missiles to bolster the alliance’s firepower independently of Washington.

Second, NATO sharpened its focus on China’s support for Russia’s war. The allies said Beijing was a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s effort and demanded that it cease and desist.

Third, a group of four Indo-Pacific democracies – dubbed the IP4 – was institutionalised as a permanent adjunct to NATO summits from now on. The four are Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

“The big takeaway from today,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told me after leaving his NATO engagements, “is that we all feel the pressures in the way the global rules-based order is being tested. The desire for us all to work together at this moment is palpable. We feel a much greater connectedness between the North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.”

And how was his host, Joe Biden? Was he sharp in the private sessions? “Completely,” replies Marles.

Somehow, despite the flaws and foibles of short-term democratic politics, democratic powers are managing, in their haphazard way, to put in place the sinews of peace, deterrents against future wars of aggression. But for sinews to function properly they need the exercise of healthy democratic muscle.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.