In his final UN speech, Macron may have given other leaders a valuable parting gift: the courage to stand up to Trump | Steve Bloomfield

OhOn the first day of the United Nations General Assembly this week, two world leaders presented competing visions for the future. Donald Trump’s speech was eerily familiar to those he has given before: a litany of false boasts and strange tangents, peppered with dark military threats against a variety of nation-states. Discussing his seven-month war with Iran, he questioned whether to “wipe out the Islamic Republic and do it quickly.”

In Trump’s eyes, the world is there to be governed – and governed only by the United States, whose economy “is the envy of the world” and whose military is “the most powerful on the planet.”

A few hours later, Emmanuel Macron took to the podium to propose an alternative. In a staunch defense of international law, multilateralism and the rules-based order, the French president declared that we live in a “new era of barbaric acts.” He directly criticized Russia and Israel, but much of his criticism was clearly aimed at Trump. “They say force is the right solution… but we will not give in,” he argued. “We cannot simply accept this new order of impunity that some are trying to erect… Do we want to live under… the law of the jungle or do we want to live in a civilized international society?

He also recognized the West’s “permanent temptation to adopt double standards.” “How many times have we heard that the sovereignty of people has value in Europe, but if we look at the Middle East and Africa, it has less value,” he asked. “No, this is unacceptable… A life is a life. Peace and security are indivisible and everyone has the right to them.”

Over the past decade, Macron has consistently been one of the only Western leaders with a morally intelligent analysis of what Europe and the world should look like. As Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu ushered us into an era of impunity, he defended the rules-based order and, in recent months, has been at the forefront of attempts to forge new alliances to prop up crumbling old ones.

He has championed the idea of ​​European strategic autonomy more than anyone, knowing that although Europe is an economic power, it has not yet fully realized its potential as a military or geopolitical force. During Trump’s first term, Macron was the only major leader willing to publicly acknowledge that NATO could no longer rely on the United States, leaving the alliance virtually dead.

And yet, grand speeches have rarely led to substantial change. His ambitious call for EU reform in 2017 came to nothing, and was essentially rejected by Angela Merkel, who praised his “passion” and “verve” but failed to support substance. Likewise, in New York this week, although his analysis was solid, the solutions were thin.

All of this is not necessarily Macron’s fault. He came to power in May 2017, as the new world order was collapsing. The EU was in crisis: one of its largest members had just voted to leave, while other member states were still deeply divided over the fallout from the eurozone crisis at the start of the decade and the migration wave of summer 2015. France’s two biggest European allies were in decline during his tenure. He has had to work with three German chancellors, the last two less popular than their predecessors, and is now on his sixth British prime minister.

More urgently, Trump had taken office four months earlier, marking the beginning of the breakdown of the rules-based order that had guided the West since the end of World War II. If Macron had had the chance to work with Barack Obama, an Angela Merkel at the height of her popularity and a British Prime Minister committed to the EU, things might have turned out differently.

Macron’s domestic difficulties have increased his impotence on the international scene. He has indeed been a lame duck for two years, ever since his disastrous early elections in 2024 left him without a majority.

But his speech in New York, his final address to the United Nations before he leaves office as president next spring, could have a more lasting impact. It certainly set the tone for the week. Over the next few days, a parade of leaders from so-called middle powers defended UN principles and made coded criticisms of Trump. Many who might have been afraid to speak out last year now feel more emboldened.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned that “the UN mission cannot be entrusted only to the great powers, or to the biggest countries, or even to just the loudest voices”, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he sought to “defend what so many are trying to destroy” and called on countries to come together to fight “political actors and governments who want to take us back to a dark past”.

The middle powers are united in their opposition. The question is whether they can agree on what they stand for. The events of recent weeks suggest that the process is underway. New alliances based on values, not geography or size, are forming – a reinvention of multilateralism rather than simply a defense of the old model.

So far this month, the EU and Canada have discussed the idea of ​​”associate membership”, while the UK has formed a new coalition of middle powers to impose sanctions against Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank.

Another new group was created this week at the UN, with Finland and Norway calling for an international body to oversee the safety of AI models. This is a direct challenge to Trump, who has called concerns about AI safety a “hoax.” – Nonetheless, 27 world leaders signed up, including Macron, Mark Carney of Canada, Friedrich Merz of Germany and Albanese.

What ties it all together is the idea of ​​“values-based realism,” an argument first made by Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and echoed this week by Carney, who arguably lit the spark of “middle powers” ​​at Davos earlier this year when he spoke of the “breakdown” of the world order brought about by Trump. The new world that Carney, Macron and others are trying to build will be made up of different, sometimes overlapping, alliances of like-minded states.

There will be a continuing question here for Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband. Which of these groups do they join, which do they try to form themselves, and which do they politely refuse? Despite Burnham’s desire to lead the campaign for new global AI standards, the UK has so far not joined the Finnish AI group, perhaps for fear of angering Trump. Another question emerged this week: how to respond to Trump’s desire to invite Putin to the G20?

Every middle power will face the same dilemma: when to fight back and when to stand on the sidelines. At least now the middle powers have understood that fighting back is an option.