The world braces for Trump, hoping for the best, unprepared for the worst

Western allies of the US are braced for the return of Donald Trump, still hoping for the best, but largely unprepared for what may prove to be a chaotic and disorientating worst.

The run-up to his inauguration has sent out a catherine wheel of signals as Trump turned up the volume on tariffs against Canada, China and Mexico, vowed to buy – and if not, invade – Greenland and the Panama Canal, and used his leverage to press Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire that the Israeli PM had resisted since May.

At the same time his pick as secretary of state, Marco Rubio, gave four and a half hours of evidence at the Senate foreign relations committee, which in the breadth of his knowledge and views resembled less Steve Bannon and more James Baker III in his heyday.

Whether Rubio and the state department will hold sway on foreign policy – over the other agencies, court favourites and a plethora of special envoys – is already the question in Europe and will depend heavily on the chief of staff, Sue Wiles, and national security adviser Mike Waltz.

Marco Rubio speaks to the Senate foreign relations committee. Photograph: Graeme Sloan/EPA

Seeking signals amid all this noise, distinguishing the threats that presage action, as opposed to bargaining bluster, and locating the rationale for an administration decision is already keeping confounded foreign diplomats in Washington up at night.

Trump has become more candid that unpredictability is his modus operandi. He told the Wall Street Journal, for instance, he was pleased that President Xi Jinping of China “respects me because he knows I am fucking crazy”.

Unfortunately, fear of the madman recedes if he does not occasionally do something truly deranged. For that reason, many expect Trump to start his administration fast, trying to unsettle his opponents and prove his American First approach has substance.

On day one, he cannot hope to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, start mass deportations or slap 25% tariffs across the world, but he is expected to reveal which foreign countries are in his sights, starting with Canada, China and Mexico.

Canadian diplomats, stunned to be thrust into the frontline alongside China, spent much of last week camped in Washington trying to bend the ear of Republican senators.

Despite its internal divisions, Canada claims to have three tiers of reprisals drawn up to put on $150bn worth of US imports if Trump launches his trade war.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who conferred with Latin American foreign ministers on Friday to devise a common Trump strategy, insists the country has consular plans in place if mass deportations start.

China has been preparing its reprisals for a year, and looking for allies.

Chietigi Bajpaee, South Asia research fellow at Chatham House, predicts that “allies will attempt a mix of appeasement, strengthening resilience and retaliation, as well as middle powers stepping up to try to preserve free trade as they did in [Trump’s] first term.”

But in Europe, where popular hostility to Trump is greater than elsewhere, the foreboding is great. The German economy minister Robert Habeck gloomily predicts the US tariffs against the EU will be framed to damage German industry. Even transatlanticists such as Friedrich Merz, widely predicted to be the next chancellor, argue that EU unity is the prerequisite if the opportunities for a successful relationship are to be exploited.

More generally, European diplomats insist they are not clutching at straws when they say the Trump administration’s policies may be more nuanced than his rhetoric. In 2016 Trump threatened 30% tariffs on Mexico but settled for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. The EU eventually avoided tariffs on cars by agreeing in 2018 to buy more US liquid gas and soya beans. Similar offers will be drafted this time.

The transcript of Rubio’s Senate confirmation hearing is also being cited as a sign that the US is not about to pull up the drawbridge. His evidence repeatedly referred to America’s global role and the importance of cultivating alliances, even admitting a preference to cooperate with Mexico over fighting drug cartels.

On Ukraine it is true that he said the official administration position was that “the war had to be brought to an end”, and that required territorial concessions by both sides. But before a ceasefire started, Ukraine needed to be in a strong bargaining position, Rubio said, adding that what Vladimir Putin had done by invading Ukraine was “unacceptable”.

He added: “Putin’s goal now is to have maximum leverage so that he can basically impose neutrality on Ukraine, retrofit and come back and do this again in four or five years. And that’s not an outcome I think any of us would favour.” Pressed to say that Ukraine had to offer military neutrality, he refused to agree, saying: “Even if the conflict were to end, there needs to be the capability of Ukraine to defend itself.” A British official said: “That does not sound like a neutral Ukraine left without security guarantees.”

On Nato, Rubio said he stood by the 2023 Kaine Rubio Act that prohibits the US president from withdrawing from Nato without Senate approval. Overall, his demand that Europe contribute more to its own defence is the utterly familiar refrain of any US politician over the past two decades.

Only once did he hint at a bigger security recasting when he asked: “Should the role of the United States and Nato in the 21st century be the primary defence role or as a backstop to aggression, with countries in the region assuming more of that responsibility by contributing more?”

Rubio, famed as a China hawk, insisted he did not believe Beijing wanted military conflict, saying: “The Chinese have basically concluded that America is sort of a tired, great power in decline. That they are on a path over the next 20 or 30 years to naturally supplant us, irrespective of what happens. And I think their preference is to not have any trade and/or armed conflict in the interim, because I think they might interrupt what they believe is a natural progression.”

In seeking alliances against China in the Indo-Pacific, for instance, he said: “It would be a mistake to go in with a cold war mentality of pick a side and pick a side now.” Overall he framed the conflict with China in terms of making the US economy and those of its allies less dependent on China.

Nor did he advocate simple withdrawal from the Middle East, rejecting abandonment of the Syrian Kurds to the Turks, a position that will be welcome in Europe. Refering to the Syrian Defence Forces, he said: “There are implications to abandoning partners who, at great sacrifice and threat, actually jailed the Isis [Islamic State] fighters. One of the reasons why we were able to dismantle Isis was because they were willing to host them in jails, at great personal threat to them.”

Even on Iran, he took a nuanced view, arguing there was one school in Iran that recognised they were “in a great deal of trouble and needed an off ramp”, while another school saw immunity from foreign interference would best came through acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Rubio unsurprisingly said the Trump administration would be the most pro-Israeli in history, but even so rejected Israel’s return to controlling Gaza, saying: “The real open question for the Palestinians is who will govern in Gaza in the short term and who will ultimately govern? Will it be the Palestinian Authority or some other entity? Because it has to be someone.”

He also agreed with the outgoing Democratic administration that a genocide was under way in Sudan and that meant the US needed to raise with the United Arab Emirates that “they are openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a genocide”.

But do Rubio’s views matter?

The former Australian premier, Malcolm Turnbull, has warned that in the new US administration there will be only be one decision maker: Donald Trump.

Turnbull advises that as the executive orders pour out of the White House next week – many of them hostile to America’s allies – the test will be first to stand up to the bullying, but then to convince him there is common ground, for there is only one question – commercial and political – that Trump ever asks: “What’s in it for me?’