Fareed: Allies are apprehensive in regards to the US presidential election

The conversation swirling around the chilly mountain air of Davos this week keeps returning to one issue. Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, said to me, 2024 is the year of 50 or so elections around the world, but there is only one election.

We are all talking about the one in America. When abroad, Americans can often be parochial, attentive to their own politics, boring their foreign counterparts with long discussions of party politics in the Senate.

Or the prospects of a new governor. But this time I find it's the Americans who are weary of their country's political drama while foreigners are panicking about what might happen in November. The American election is taking place at a crucial moment around the world.

We're seeing several challenges to the rules based international order that has served humanity well for decades. In Europe, the bloodiest war the continent has seen since World War Two threatens to upend its security system.

In the Middle East, Iran and its allies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are testing their ability to disrupt the balance of power in the region and in Asia. The rise of China remains the large long term disruption to which one must add.

North Korea is accelerating arms buildup and increasingly belligerent rhetoric. All of these have become tests of will for the US, which is scrambling to mobilize its allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to help deter these threats.

And resolve crises. But many allies worry that in November, America could decide it has had enough, that these many problems perhaps do not centrally threaten Americans security and are therefore not worth confronting. Much of the rhetoric of Donald Trump and some of his closest.

Ideological soulmates from Tucker Carlson to Vivek Ramaswamy feeds into this fear. So if Trump were to win the election and practice what he preaches, what happens to American allies that have stuck their necks out to partner with Washington? Sweden's Bildt told me. Consider my country in Finland.

We have taken a huge step in joining NATO's one that puts us in a confrontational pose against Russia. We did this under the assumption that we had the backing of the armed forces of the United States. What happens if Trump wins and decides to pull out of NATO's?.

We would be left exposed and have to think long and hard about our options. Finland, for its part, abandoned the policy of neutrality that had served it well for more than 70 years, and it could find itself deeply vulnerable.

To Russian attacks along its 830 mile border with that country. Its capital. Helsinki is less than 200 miles from St Petersburg. I detected similar concerns when I was in Australia a few weeks ago. On the surface, Australian officials and analysts.

Were bullish about the newly strengthened alliance with America and proud that they would now be trusted by Washington with nuclear submarines, a technology that so far the US has shared only with Britain.

But underneath the bravado there is an unease. In recent years, Australia has moved decisively to ally itself with Washington and in the process enraged China, its largest economic partner. This is a balancing act that makes some strategists nervous.

Sam Roggeveen is a scholar at the Lowy Institute. Australia's leading think tank on international affairs. He has written a book, The Echidna Strategy, that best articulates this nervousness. Roggeveen argues.

That Australia is making a major mistake by relying on the US to be there for it over the next few decades. He believes that the Americans will, over time, conclude it's just not worth the enormous and sustained costs to confront China in Asia,.

That its security does not require it and it will scale back its foreign commitments. That would leave Australia in a terrible place, having angered and alienated the Chinese. But without America's security umbrella to show for it, he advocates turning Australia.

Into an a kidnap. An Australian version of a porcupine hard to attack, even harder to digest. Ever since World War Two, Washington on a bipartisan basis, has adopted an expansive vision of its own security, one that recognized it alone could help undergird.

Stability in the key regions of the world. That global role has helped create what historians call the long peace and the open global economy. If Trump wins in November and rejects that broader view of America and the world, a retreat could create power vacuums, leave allies exposed.

And tempt adversaries to accelerate their attacks and heighten their ambitions. And that is why this time around, it is foreigners nervously watching and obsessing about the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Go to CNN dot com slash Street for a link.

To my Washington Post column this week. After the break, a rare interview with one of the most important players in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister. Is the region spiraling out of control? What will it take for the kingdom to establish relations with Israel?.

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