2026: The End of the Western Alliance and the Emergence of China

Historians will mark 2026 as the year the Western alliance ended. While President Trump’s actions have alienated many allies, allied leaders have also revealed their true colors. They are turning tail to pursue their nations’ own short-term interests with the PRC, while having the audacity to frame America as “the main enemy.” Beijing could not be happier.

Davos this week made that unmistakably clear. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney led the way with a blistering attack on the United States:

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

It was a truly astounding speech, revealing not only weakness, but a willingness to abandon the alliance at the first sign of friction. Don’t be fooled by the absence of the word “America.” The target of his ire was unmistakable.

Carney spoke of health as a risk to global integration. Could he possibly mean the COVID virus that likely escaped from a Chinese government laboratory, and whose officials actively suppressed and obscured information about its spread? No, no mention of that.

He warned of financial infrastructure as a form of coercion. Was he possibly referring to U.S. sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, sanctions that imposed real costs on the United States itself? No.

He spoke of supply chains as tools of exploitation. Was he calling out China’s decade-long weaponization of rare earths? Again, no.

Instead, all arrows pointed toward the newly designated “main enemy”: Trump and the USA.

Finally, tariffs as weapons. There is plenty to criticize about Trump’s tariffs, as ITIF has repeatedly done. But Carney, and many other alliance leaders at Davos, conveniently ignored a central fact: For decades, the United States served as the world’s consumer market, running massive trade deficits and hollowing out its own manufacturing base. Much of this was driven by foreign protectionism, compounded by the fact that the dollar serves as the world's reserve currency, a status that significantly benefits foreign exporters.

PM Carney also failed to mention that Canada thrived under a past system it knew how to exploit with impunity. Canada has long appeared on the USTR’s Special 301 Report Watch List for weak intellectual property enforcement. It limits U.S. audio-video imports and imposes a digital services tax targeting U.S. firms. It maintains closed markets in dairy, aerospace, and banking, and restricts U.S. seed imports. Canada subsidizes lumber exports and runs a persistent trade surplus with the United States.

So please, spare us the lectures about American unfairness.

Canada praises the old system because it knew how to manipulate it to the advantage of Canadian producers. Oh, and on top of that, Mr. Carney knows perfectly well that Canada could have secured the same 10 percent tariff deal the United Kingdom got had it been willing to make modest concessions. But no, instead he chose the well-worn victim narrative against the big, bad Yanks.

Indeed, most purported allies are now tripping over themselves to cut deals with the Chinese Communist Party. The Western alliance be damned!

• Last week, Carney struck an unbelievably questionable deal with Xi Jinping to allow Chinese EV exports to Canada in exchange for Canadian canola.
• French President Emmanuel Macron flew to Beijing to beg for more trade and investment.
• Likewise, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to visit China next month to discuss “bilateral relations.”
• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to prosecute CCP spies in his government, fearing it would alienate Beijing. Starmer even floated a revived “golden era” of trade relations with China, contingent on allowing China to build a massive embassy in London, while castigating Conservative predecessors for insufficient kowtowing.

These “leaders” are not partners; they are supplicants, hoping Xi will refrain from punishing their countries and perhaps allow them to sell a few more goods in China, even as China eats their domestic industries alive.

Only Japan—and its new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi—has shown genuine backbone, demonstrating a willingness to stand up to the CCP, particularly in defending the South China Sea. Perhaps proximity provides clarity. After thousands of years beside China, Japan seems to understand Chinese imperial ambition when it sees it.

So how do we explain this abandonment of the alliance and the kowtowing to China? Are countries really just chasing a few yuan?

After World War II, the concept of “the West” referred to an alliance led by the United States and joined by Japan, South Korea, the Commonwealth nations, and Western Europe. Internally, the alliance was bound by shared commitments to markets and democracy, underwritten by U.S. economic and trade sacrifice to keep allied countries committed. Externally, the threat of Soviet expansionism and totalitarianism kept wavering partners aligned.

The collapse of the Soviet Union appeared to remove that external glue. Instead of confronting the reality of a new cold war with the PRC—a notion the global elite has long vociferously rejected—the majority of the elite embraced a utopian globalization. That same worldview later manifested in the claim that, to the extent a cold war existed at all, it was Trump’s fault.

Following Francis Fukuyama’s vision, they came to believe we reached the “end of history.” Market democracy was assumed to be the inevitable future, even for China. The world, they believed, was converging. As a result, the threat was no longer Marxist-Leninist authoritarianism. The biggest challenges were said to be climate change, racism, and U.S. militarism.

Then Trump entered the scene. In his first term, he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords. On the first day of his second term, he made clear that “America First” applied to trade policy as well, refusing to tolerate the protectionist nonsense so many nations (including U.S. allies) have long used to inflate the U.S. trade deficit.

So, if your goal is global integration, fewer borders, open trade, and stringent CO₂ limits, Trump is the Antichrist. Xi, by contrast, is merely a statesman who says the right things—just another global leader who professes support for climate action, globalization, frictionless trade, and non-militarism.

Never mind the man behind the curtain, Xi, who says that China’s rise has “significantly shifted the worldwide historical evolution of the contest between the two different ideologies and social systems of socialism and capitalism in a way that favors socialism.” Or that China represents a “great struggle” and “systems contest” with Western capitalist democracy.

No, to the extent those inconvenient words are even heard, they are dismissed as propaganda meant to keep the masses engaged. After all, the real “truth” about the PRC is found at Davos, where CCP speeches are carefully crafted to soothe audiences and lull them into complacency.

If Trump knows how to alienate audiences, the PRC knows how to seduce them. Last year at Davos, naturally, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang delivered exactly what the globalists wanted to hear:

First, we need to jointly promote a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. Economic globalization is an inherent requirement for the development of productive forces, and an inevitable result of technological advancement.

Translation: Ignore China’s systematic undermining of the WTO to gain unfair and predatory advantages since joining it in 2001.

Second, we need to jointly uphold and practice true multilateralism.

Translation: The United States should stop defending its allies, while China reserves the right to continue backing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Third, we need to jointly foster new drivers and strengths for global economic development… We should seize and make the most of these opportunities to promote international cooperation on scientific and technological innovation.

Translation: The CCP, which already disguises illicit technology transfer as “collaboration,” would greatly welcome access to sensitive industrial and defense technologies held by foreign governments and firms.

Don’t worry, Xuexiang saved the best for last. The closer:

Fourth, we need to jointly tackle major global challenges.

Oh, how the Davos Man swooned. Apparently unbothered by the fact that China’s coal-fired power plant construction just hit a ten-year high.

We have been here before. Alliances collapse.

Consider the Holy League (1571–1573), an alliance of Christian Mediterranean states, including Spain, Venice, the Papal States, Genoa, and others, united against the Ottoman Empire. The alliance achieved a spectacular victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, one of history’s greatest naval battles. Yet within two years, it disintegrated—not because of defeat, but because of diverging priorities. Venice sought to protect its eastern Mediterranean trade routes. Spain focused on the western Mediterranean and became increasingly consumed by rebellions in the Netherlands. The Papal States pursued a broader religious crusade.

In 1573, Venice chose trade over solidarity, unilaterally making peace with the Ottomans to preserve its commercial interests. Spain was furious but too preoccupied to continue alone. The remaining members simply drifted away.

Welcome to today.

U.S. voters, exhausted by bearing the burdens of global leadership while so-called allies ran massive surpluses and free-rode on American security, elected Donald Trump—twice. Naturally, he then went to Davos. This year in particular, he arrived with a relatively simple message: Enough. Cut the nonsense, or you’re on your own.

The reality is that America did bear the burden. It defended Europe, Japan, and Korea from the threat of communism. And now those same allies run to align with a Marxist-Leninist adversary so they can sell a few more commodities, even if hollowing out their auto industries is part of the bargain (cough, cough, Canada).

Rather than rebuild the alliance under new and "palatable” leadership, today’s Western “leaders” collapsed like a house of cards at the first sign of trouble. They now publicly denounce America and sprint to Beijing, all while refusing to bear the burden of defending democracy themselves—because, apparently, that would require too much blood and treasure.

Let the Yanks bleed and pay, even as we insult and undermine them for doing it. And while we’re at it, let’s double down on technology protectionism. Let’s impose so-called “technology sovereignty” measures against U.S. firms; they deserve it, even if doing so only strengthens China.

In the Davos worldview, we are all simply humans. If there are any divisions, they are not between countries, but between the capitalist West and the rest of the world. And now, seemingly, between the evil, vulgar Trump and the enlightened, polite, and diplomatic global elite.

But if the globalists are wrong, and China is in fact seeking global hegemony—imposing its rules on the world, silencing criticism, and restructuring the international economy for its own benefit—then this is a true tragedy.

In that case, 2026 will be remembered as the year the West lost and China won. Because without a strong alliance, there is no way to constrain China’s techno-economic war against the West. No way to limit unfairly produced Chinese imports, protect sensitive technological exports, or build advanced industries together. There is no partnership strong enough to help the rest of the world resist the siren song of Beijing’s development model.

Perhaps Davos Man is right. Perhaps we are moving toward a wonderful, happy world—if only America would behave itself. Alas, I fear otherwise.

Even if a pragmatic, pro-alliance president takes U.S. office in 2029, the damage may be irreversible. Many U.S. allies have already moved on, their feelings hurt and their pride bruised. By 2029, China will be deeply embedded, giving the CCP greater leverage to ensure that any foreign leader who has a change of heart thinks twice about rejoining the Western alliance. Leverage, once gained, is rarely surrendered.

Maybe the Western alliance was doomed all along. America’s techno-economic and trade vulnerabilities, many of them caused by our “allies’” unfair trade practices and then exacerbated by decades of free-riding, made it almost inevitable that the United States would elect a nationalist, protectionist president.

And even if American politics could somehow have avoided that outcome, the reality is that many of our allies have long been fickle, anything but Churchillian. Winston Churchill famously proclaimed, at the darkest hour of the fight against the Nazis:

We shall go forward together. The road upwards is stony. There are upon our journey dark and dangerous valleys through which we have to make and fight our way. But it is sure and certain that if we persevere – and we shall persevere – we shall come through these dark and dangerous valleys into a sunlight broader and more genial and more lasting than mankind has ever known.

Western leaders today are more likely to say something along the lines of: “We shall go forward on our own. The road is smooth and traveled with pollution-free Chinese EVs. We shall try to persevere—but maybe we won’t. And most importantly, we will come through these dark and dangerous American valleys into a sunlit future powered by globalization, few borders, and our benevolent Chinese overlords.”

Finally, Western college students, especially in Europe, have long been fed a steady stream of propaganda holding that the Western liberal democratic system is not merely imperfect, but fundamentally evil. That mindset clearly extends beyond universities.

Many leaders in Europe, with perhaps the exception of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, appear to have embraced a cultural relativism that treats Western values and traditions as not worth defending, or worse, as worthy of attack. Say what you want about Trump, but he does not accept this postmodern worldview.

The depth and longevity of this cultural erosion is visible in public attitudes. A 2011 Pew survey asked respondents in France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States whether they agreed with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior.” Just 20 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds in France and Spain agreed, compared to 44 percent in the United States.

These attitudes are indicative of what Benedict Beckeld calls “oikophobia,” the fear or hatred of one’s own home, society, or civilization. In such an environment, affirming confidence in Western values is treated less as civic pride than as moral transgression, with real costs enforced through the threat of being “canceled.” It should therefore come as no surprise that leaders who say, or truly believe, that the PRC’s authoritarian system is just as legitimate as their own are unwilling to robustly defend their own.

God help us. And let us hope that democratic India grows strong, powerful, and quickly.