D-Day is a time for reflection – but also to take stock of new threats to world peace

For the first time since the end of the Second World War, there are serious doubts about the fundamentals of American foreign policy

The D-Day commemorations are, inevitably, a sad as well as an inspirational affair. As the Queen deftly noted in her speech, the veterans last gathered in such numbers to mark the anniversary of the events of 1944 back in 2004, for the 60th anniversary, and that was expected to be the last such reunion. Yet the wartime generation – “my generation” as the Queen put it – is indeed “resilient”, and 255 Normandy veterans are in Portsmouth to remember their comrades, and to remind us of the sacrifices that they, and so many others made.

The Queen and President Trump were obviously two of the more prominent attendees; but the acts of remembrance are not about them, and nor are they some exclusively Anglo-American show. Rightly, representatives from Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland and Slovakia will also be there.

The two notable absentees from the war time “Big Four” allies are Russia and China, despite the suffering and huge sacrifices both countries made during the Second World War and, in China’s case, the long conflict with Japan that preceded it. Perhaps it was felt that inviting Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to a celebration of freedom would be a little ironic; then again, neither Joseph Stalin nor Chiang Kai-shek is remembered for their devotion to liberal democracy.

This is also, of course, a moment to reflect on the present and future, and the security of the world today. Arguably it is at its most vulnerable since the end of the Second World War, given the new threats of terrorism and the rise of political extremists. Certainly western values have not been so challenged since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union three decades ago.

The values that were fought for 75 years ago, and lessons of the mistakes that led up to the Second World War, found their expression after the conflict in the interlocking structures of international economic and military cooperation established in the later 1940s. This is seen, for example, clearly in the evolution of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, authored by Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, as it came to form the founding constitution of the United Nations.

The western allies and some of the enemies of 1944 were, by the middle 1950s, all in partnership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), a body that has kept the peace and secured the freedoms of millions in the decades since. There are other bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and the “Five Eyes” security network.

Now, of course those very institutions find themselves in varying degrees of jeopardy. The external threats are plain – terrorism on a new and unprecedented scale, symbolised in the so-called Islamic State, a revanchist Russia, a geopolitically ambitious China and aspirant nuclear powers such as Iran and North Korea.

Such challenges can be met, and indeed have been by these robust international bodies – the one time that Article 5 of the Nato Treaty has been invoked was after the 9/11 outrages in America, because “an attack on one is an attack on all”.

The more lethal threat to the existence of the post-war institutions comes from their most powerful and prominent member, the one that acts as the foundation and ink across them all – the United States. Donald Trump has made little secret of his impatience with his Nato allies’ failure to live up to the spirit, if not the letter, of their commitments to fund Nato. The president did so again during the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.

He is similarly dismissive of the UN’s role in, for example, relations between Israel and the Palestinians, defying UN resolutions on the occupied territories, most recently the Golan Heights. As for the World Trade Organisation, Mr Trump’s attitude to tariffs and trade wars is that they are generally good. The WTO itself is fatally weakened by the veto placed by America on the appointment of judges to the WTO court of arbitration. It is close to collapse.

For the first time since the end of the Second World War, there are serious doubts about the fundamentals of American foreign policy. Principles that were taken for granted are being openly questioned, and America’s friends and allies are concerned. “America First” may be a fine election slogan, but it is not a sustainable basis for keeping the world, or indeed the United States, out of the sort of dangers that befell humanity in the 1940s. If nothing else, Donald Trump has been reminded of that this week.