Democracy around the globe is under threat from the retreat of Donald Trump’s US into isolationism and its likely replacement by China on the world stage, John Major has said.
The former UK prime minister, who rarely offers direct opinion on contemporary politics, used an interview with BBC Radio 4 to say Trump’s administration was unlike anything he had seen before – and to warn that Washington may live to regret ceding global leadership to a more autocratic power.
Major, who was in office from 1990 to 1997, also condemned JD Vance, the US vice-president, as hypocritical and “not statesmanlike” for lecturing Europe on free speech while “cuddling” Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that democracy is threatened. It’s been in modest decline for the last 18 years. There’s an ugly nationalism growing mostly from the intolerant right,” Major said.
“At this particular time the big nations – America, China, Russia – are beginning to act unilaterally, where once they would have consulted. And that is a concern, because it does presage the prospect of very great and rather unpleasant changes.”
Asked about Trump’s administration, Major called it “a form of presidency I haven’t previously seen”, and he warned against the US president – who appears to be trying to reach an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by consulting more closely with the Russian president than Europe – avoiding conceding too much to Russia.
“Consider what happens if Russia can claim a win,” Major said. “China is going to notice that, and so will the world, and so will every tin-pot dictator around the world. If America is not to stand behind its allies in the way the world has previously seen, then we are moving into a wholly different and, in my view, rather more dangerous world.”
Major said he feared the US “may now be turning her back on the international responsibilities she has previously taken, and if she does so there is no other nation state that can replace them, other than China”.
He added: “That is not something I think the west would certainly wish to see. And so if that happens, the world, including America, may regret what subsequently follows.”
Major was scathing about Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference on Friday, in which he said the erosion of free speech in Europe was more of a threat to the continent than Russia or China.
“That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world,” Major said. “It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off a very dangerous signal.
“It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr Putin. In Mr Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, at a statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.”
Asked why he had decided to speak out, Major said: “I rather take the view that former prime ministers by and large should keep out of the way and leave it to the current generation, but sometimes there are things that need to be said that perhaps can’t be said so easily by the present government or by politicians in office that nonetheless need to be said.”
Source: theguardian.com
