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Boris Johnson
OpinionComment
Terry Su
Terry Su

Opinion | Japan’s drift and Europe’s troubles do not bode well for Pax Americana

  • Post-Abe Japan has moved a step closer to amending its pacifist constitution and Europe is straining to deal with the economic pain from the war in Ukraine
  • These events shaking up the United States’ key allies are likely to cast a long shadow over Washington’s global alliance system

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Terry Su
A week is a long time in politics, or so goes the adage usually attributed to former British prime minister Harold Wilson. On July 7, Boris Johnson was forced to resign as British prime minister. The next day, the murder of Japan’s most influential politician, former prime minister Shinzo Abe, sent shock waves across the world.
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Then on July 14, Mario Draghi, Italy’s non-partisan premier, tendered his resignation after the populist Five Star Movement, the second biggest party in the coalition government, boycotted a critical vote in the Senate on his government’s economic aid package.

All these events shaking up America’s key allies are likely to cast a long shadow over Washington’s global alliance system.

They come at a time when triumphalist sentiment in Washington, which was boosted by the US’ and its allies’ swift and harsh sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine in late February, is being dampened by apparent Russian resilience, as well as economic pain felt worldwide – including close US allies – in the wake of the sanctions on Russian energy exports.
Britain still enjoys its traditional strategic separateness, and in all likelihood will remain America’s staunchest follower post-Johnson. However, Britain is still reeling from Brexit, and the country might be increasingly flummoxed by the cost side of the equation when it comes to solidarity with the US.
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A leadership change could serve to buy time for a stocktaking, to say the least. After all, as eventual British prime minister Lord Palmerston said in 1848: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

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