Scott Keeler/Tampa Bay Times/AP

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) appears with Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to announce Florida will be exempt from new plans to expand offshore drilling in federal waters – a decision some observers say is tinged with partisan favoritism.

President Trump’s major policy moves over the course of his first year in office have had a common denominator: They either overtly favor his base of support – the roughly one-third of voters who solidly back him – or they appear to penalize those states that vote Democratic.

The most striking example is tax reform, which struck a blow against blue-state Americans who tend to pay high state and local taxes, or SALT. These are residents of states that did not vote for Mr. Trump in 2016, and beginning this year, SALT deductibility on federal taxes is curtailed.

Other recent policy moves also appear to have an anti-blue tilt. Soon after the Trump administration announced a plan to expand offshore drilling in federal waters, it granted a waiver to Florida – a crucial Trump state in 2016. Blue states are also eager for waivers, but they’re still waiting.

Disaster relief funding has also sparked accusations of partisanship. Democratic politicians in heavily blue California were outraged in November when a Trump administration disaster aid request to Congress did not specifically mention their state, following devastating wildfires. A December aid request, which does mention California (as well as Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico), passed the House but languished in the Senate.

Puerto Rico, too, a Democrat-dominant US territory (albeit with a Republican governor) has also complained bitterly about its treatment by Washington following hurricane Maria.

Marijuana is another case in point. A recent Justice Department memo freed prosecutors to enforce federal law more aggressively in states that have decriminalized marijuana’s production and sale – mostly blue states, including California.

Even the Trump administration’s recent letter casting doubt on federal funding for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey has political overtones. Both states are solid blue.

Trump’s base-oriented approach to policymaking and messaging could make future collaboration with Democrats all the more difficult as soon as Friday, when the government will shut down if a funding deal in Congress can’t be reached. The clock is ticking, too, on the young illegal immigrants who face deportation if Congress can’t agree on a plan by March 5.

And the November midterms are fast approaching. Trump’s appeals to the base may get his own supporters fired up, but they’re also a rallying cry for Democrats, who have a shot at retaking the House and possibly even the Senate. If Republicans lose either house, Trump’s ability to get anything through Congress will be severely curtailed.

To the winner go the spoils

Republicans say it stands to reason that Trump-era policies would favor his own party: To the winners go the spoils.

“In a polarized environment, where only Democrats before 2010 [during President Obama’s first two years] and only Republicans since 2016 are making policy, there’s a natural tendency to have policy favor the people who are making it,” says Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

“Democrats have that tendency as well,” Mr. Ayres adds, pointing to the Obama administration’s unwillingness to grant waivers on some requirements of its signature health-care reform law. “I don’t know that it’s a conscious choice, as much as it is a logical consequence of having one party in power.”

Other observers see a more profound shift at work. Partisan polarization, which has been deepening for decades, is certainly a factor. But Trump’s approach to politics is unlike anything the nation has seen before.

Trump didn’t follow the usual path of a successful presidential candidate, who plays to his party’s base to win the nomination, then tacks to the center for the general election. Rather, Trump has rarely veered from his base approach. His convention speech emphasized populist, nativist themes, as did his inaugural address – not the high-road, unifying rhetoric that Americans expect at such national moments.

As president, Trump still aims most of his messaging at his base. It’s possible, some observers suggest, that his reported vulgar comment about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa was an intentional signal to conservative  TV talkers like Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter that he hadn’t gone soft on immigration.

In addition, aside from regular travel to the blue states where he has residences, New York and New Jersey, Trump travels for events almost exclusively in states that he won in the 2016 election. He has yet to travel to California, a rarity for the first year of a presidency in recent decades.

“This is not a ‘so what,’ or ‘all presidents do this,’ ” says Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. “All presidents don’t do this. If they did, then Democratic presidents would never have visited the South, and would have designed their policies to damage the South.”

The end of congressional bargaining

On tax reform, the most significant legislative achievement of Trump’s first year, it’s probably not fair to point just at Trump for a policy that tends to pose more harm to Democratic constituencies than Republican.

“It’s more the Republican congressional majorities that have been developing these programs in their detail,” says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“What has changed is that while there used to be a modicum of congressional bargaining across major policy developments, the party in power now tries to pass legislation on straight party-line votes,” says Mr. Jillson. “In that case, you can both enact your traditional policy preferences without compromise, and enjoy punishing your enemies.”

It’s true that Mr. Obama also passed major legislation with just Democratic votes, but not before making major concessions to Republicans, Jillson notes.

In the first two years, “Obama and the Democratic majorities bent over backwards to develop the Mitt Romney version of national health care and also to give a third of the stimulus package to tax cuts,” Jillson says. “That, I think, was the end of the traditional attempt to offer elements of a major package to your opponents, to try to get them on board.”

Tax reform, and the new limit on the SALT deduction, presented an interesting case for Trump. As a native of New York, a high-tax blue state, he might have taken pity on those facing a financial blow. But New Yorkers aren’t his base. The state didn’t vote for him in 2016, and when some of his wealthy hometown friends pushed him last month to help on SALT deductibility, he joked, “You guys seem to be doing OK,” according to The New York Times.

Florida’s waiver on offshore drilling, in contrast, played right into Trump’s interests. The president is keen to see Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who personally requested the waiver, run for the Senate in November. Governor Scott argued that new coastal drilling would harm Florida’s tourist economy. It’s also worth noting that Trump’s winter estate, Mar-a-Lago, sits on Florida’s east coast.

One constant seems clear: Trump’s practice of wrapping himself in the love of his political base isn’t likely to change, despite his low overall job approval ratings, averaging just 39 percent. Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport calls Trump’s “selective focus” on his base “an attractive and tempting alternative for any politician.” But in times of deepening partisan polarization, it may not be an effective model for long-term success.

At this time last year, the Dutch, French, and Germans were heading toward elections whose stakes were no less than the endurance of the European Union.

The postwar project did more than survive the far-right rebellion of 2017: The victory in May of French President Emmanuel Macron over the Euroskeptic Marine Le Pen gave the bloc a decisive boost.

And while Germany currently faces uncertainty as Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to build a “grand coalition” between her center-right party and the center-left – a deal that could still break down before it is endorsed Sunday – the prospect of another Merkel term looks to be increasing after months of political limbo.

Both leaders face competing expectations between what the world demands of them and what their domestic audiences want. But if a “grand coalition” is formed in Germany, allowing Ms. Merkel and Mr. Macron to renew the Franco-German partnership that is at the heart of the bloc, many see an opening to act on reforms to deepen the integration of the EU – now that eurozone economies are taking off after the debt crisis, and citizen optimism in the European project is at its highest in years.

“This is the moment. There is not going to be another moment coming like this any time soon,” says Jan Techau, director of the Europe program at the German Marshall Fund of the US in Berlin. “It is now delivery time. Some people say it’s the last hurrah of mainstream politics. If they can’t deliver now, on social reform, on protecting voters and giving them a sense of being protected, the real populist moment could come, and not just some failed Le Pen revolution.”

Markus Schreiber/AP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (c.), Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer (l.), and Social Democratic Party Chairman Martin Schulz pose for the media after the exploratory talks between Ms. Merkel's conservative bloc and the Social Democrats on forming a new German government in Berlin, on Jan. 12.

Europe on the rebound?

“Europe is back,” Macron declared last week on a trip to China as negotiations were underway in Germany. In many ways it is this kind of pro-EU stance, with its roots in his campaign, that accounts for some of the mood shift across Europe. Macron gave a major policy speech in September outlining his vision for the future of Europe, including a more integrated eurozone.

Sébastien Maillard, director of the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris, calls him “the most proud European we’ve ever had in the Fifth Republic.” Still, says Mr. Maillard, it won’t amount to much without a German party that supports him, since “you can’t do Europe all by yourself,” he says. “There has to be this year a new and clear, concrete European outcome. And that historically requires, and still does require, a strong Franco-German engine.”

The coalition talks between Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) is Merkel's second attempt, after failing the first time to score a deal with the Greens and Free Democrats. But this time, EU reform is a much higher priority in the talks, due to SPD leader and former EU Parliament President Martin Schulz's role in them.

In the 28-page document that outlines a future government in Berlin, the first three pages are dedicated to European reform. Merkel hailed a “new dawn for Europe.” That benefits Macron, as it aligns more closely with his reform agenda.

But Josef Janning, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations Berlin office, says that alignment would only go so far when it comes to risk and burden sharing. Germany's proposals include better tools for staving off financial crises in the eurozone and a bigger German contribution to the EU budget. But Macron has been pushing for greater financial harmonization and integration, beyond that which Germany may be comfortable with.

“Macron was thinking about a new founding of Europe. That is not the spirit of the prospective grand coalition in Berlin,” Mr. Janning says. Still, he says, it represents a “strong rhetorical commitment to Europe and to Franco-German cooperation.”

Moves toward further integration could backfire among Euroskeptic publics, but the reforms come at an optimistic time. According to a Eurobarometer poll published in December, 74 percent in the eurozone support the currency, its highest level since 2004. Forty percent of EU members say they have a positive image of the bloc (37 percent feel neutral). That number jumped to 75 percent in a different poll where respondents were only given a choice between negative or positive. One of the most positive views comes from the Netherlands, the first country last year to face a potential populist surge under Geert Wilders, who ended up polling lower than expected in March 2017.

That support doesn’t surprise Amsterdam resident Paul Van Der Ploeg. “The populists are shouting very loud and the media is paying a lot of attention,” he says. “But at the end the silent majority are quite happy and optimistic.”

'Something you want to live in'

Macron and Germany’s next chancellor face huge challenges in Europe, from the separatist movement in Spain's Catalonia and Italian elections slated for March that could show a further fraying of mainstream politics, to the continued Brexit negotiations and Poland and like-minded allies in the east who have butted heads with the EU over refugees and the rule of law.

German and French leadership also faces an uncomfortable dichotomy. If the liberal world, dismayed by Brexit and President Trump’s election in the US, looks to the young Macron and the steady hand of Merkel to uphold its values, the two face different expectations at home.

The case and point is the coalition negotiations underway. If a “grand coalition” is the most pro-EU scenario, it’s not necessarily what Germans want. The youth wing of the SPD, for example, went on a canvasing tour over the weekend against a Merkel-led coalition so the party, which fared its worst since 1949, can return to its leftist roots.

Macron also faces skepticism at home. So far street protests have not undermined his labor reforms, despite attempts by the hard-line CGT union, France’s biggest, to stop him. Still, union boss Philippe Martinez says that amid high abstention and fear of the far right, Macron’s victory was not a resounding endorsement of his agenda that ensures success ahead. Macron has been under fire in recent weeks, including from former allies, for a hard stance on migrants. “We consider he was elected by default, not because people really wanted him,” he says.

There is a parallel in EU attitudes. Many citizens are not impassioned defenders, but in a troubled time, with Trump, Brexit, North Korea, and Russia rumbling, they see the bloc as the less risky option. Macron is trying to change that with a series of constituent meetings to put energy behind the idea of Europe, says Maillard, which he aims to take around the continent. “Macron is doing all he can to make Europe not just something you have to live with, but make it something that you want to live in,” he says.

He may have more space to reinforce that message, as 2018 sees a respite – if not a complete one – from Euroskeptic candidates. Janning says Europe needs to take back the narrative to restore citizen confidence.

“People don’t know what to think anymore, with all of the talk of populists who have rather successfully confused people into thinking they have to decide whether they are European or national,” he says. “They don’t have to. ... The EU was not created to compete with member states but to complement member states.”

Meghan Dhaliwal

C, a 26 year old Honduran woman with a humanitarian Mexican visa, lays in the back of a midwife's car for a prenatal exam on the street in Tijuana, Mexico. C works in a restaurant in Tijuana but has been too sick to work since getting pregnant. She is currently staying at a crowded migrant shelter in a tent in the yard of the shelter.

It took more than a year, thousands of miles of travel, and a medical exam by a pair of volunteer midwives in the back of a car for C., a Honduran migrant in Mexico, to learn the real value of her temporary humanitarian visa.

“I found out in this moment that I have rights,” says C., who asked to use only her first initial for security reasons, as she sits amid dozens of brightly colored tents crammed into the open-air section of the shelter where she and her boyfriend lived for about a month this year. The midwives suggested she seek out a doctor to confirm their suspicion that she’s having twins – a visit C. didn’t know she was entitled to make.

C.’s visa includes medical care, permission to work legally in Mexico, and the security of having “papers” to show when police stop her on the street. But to access these benefits, first she has to know they exist. It’s a clear shortcoming in Mexico’s nascent, yet rapidly growing, asylum system.

That program could be expected to shoulder even more applicants from its northern neighbor if the US follows through on calls to designate Mexico a “safe third country” for refugees: a place the US could legally send asylum-seekers while their cases are pending, or permanently, instead of granting them asylum in the US.

It’s a burgeoning practice across the world, also known as “refugee offshoring,” and in line with the Trump administration’s  goal of taking a stricter stance on who it allows into the country as migrants or refugees. But C.’s experience, like other refugee-seekers’, underscores some of the potential challenges ahead. And it raises a fundamental question: What makes a country “safe?” In Mexico, for example, more than 26,000 people have gone missing in the past decade alone, amid ongoing cartel violence and widespread impunity.

“[T]he Mexican government has long failed to protect the human rights of its own people,” says Eleanor Acer, senior director of refugee protection for Human Rights First, a US-based nongovernmental organization.

“While some US politicians may like the idea of the United States shifting or ‘offshoring’ refugee protection responsibilities on to Mexico … it would also result in an even greater humanitarian disaster” in Mexico, Ms. Acer says.

Refugee 'ping-pong'?

Refugee offshoring is a controversial practice around the world. The US used its naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to process seafaring refugees in the 1990s. Australia has made deals with Papua New Guinea and Nauru to house Australia’s aspiring refugees in large camps. In recent years, hard-line immigration policies mean that people sent to these offshore processing centers never actually enter Australia, but are instead sent home or to other countries. Some see the practice as an attempt to keep refugees both out of sight and out of mind for citizens and politicians.

In January, President Trump’s executive order on border security noted the intention to return “aliens … to the territory from which they came.” The order directs immigration officials to return people who are apprehended coming from a “contiguous territory” – Canada or Mexico – to that country, even if they’re not from there, in keeping with existing immigration law.

Last year, the Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act of 2017 was introduced in Congress. The bill would allow the US Secretary of Homeland Security to remove asylum-seekers to “a safe third country,” including Mexico. It’s a sentiment that’s been repeated by US politicians as recently as October. (The White House and Department of Justice declined to comment for this story.)

Critics point out that legislation doesn’t always jibe with logistics: The US would need to work with Mexico at the very least to coordinate asylum seekers' travel from one country to the other, which could be a tough sell. Ms. Acer also warned of “ ‘refugee ping pong’ – when one country turns a refugee away to another country that also refuses to take that refugee in.”

Consistent calls for Mexico to take some of the asylum-seekers in the US indicate “it's very much part of the administration’s plans for how to keep refugees out of the US,” she says.

Proponents of expanding “third safe country” policies argue the legal foundation is clear. 

“The Refugee Convention is explicit on this matter,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for strict immigration limits. “If [asylum seekers] pass through Mexico [on their way to the US] they’re just a regular migrant, simply looking for a better place to live rather than grabbing the first available life preserver.”

A 'life preserver'

Edwin, standing in a tree-shaded park near a meeting house for Casa Refugiados, an NGO focused on refugee orientation and education programs in Mexico City, certainly found his life preserver in Mexico. But he can picture a scenario where he may need to go further north to the US to feel truly safe.

He never intended to leave Honduras, despite the extortion and multiple death threats from increasingly brazen gangs. He tried moving to three different Honduran states before his cousin’s murder pushed him to finally flee the country. Soon after he crossed into Mexico, United Nations workers told him he had a strong case for asylum.

“My destination was the US, but things happen for a reason,” Edwin says of gaining asylum in Mexico. He had some support finding a job and housing here through Casa Refugiados, but “it’s been tough.” He fears his foreigner status makes him a target for kidnapping, and he’s constantly looking over his shoulder for any familiar faces from back home.

The United Nations’ humanitarian agency predicts that Mexico will receive 16,000 asylum-seekers by the end of 2017, more than half of whom are fleeing Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In the first half of 2017, asylum claims in Mexico were up 94 percent from the same period in 2016. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures show about 20 percent of applicants abandon the process. More than half – about 60 percent of the remaining pool – will get asylum. Those declined protection might return home, stay without documentation, or choose to continue the increasingly dangerous journey north to the United States.

Assessments of the current state of Mexico’s asylum system and its treatment of migrants vary widely. On the southern border there’s a mix of sympathy and suspicion for newly arriving Central Americans, looking for work in communities already rife with unemployment. The capital is a melting pot of nationalities, where it’s easier to blend in as an outsider, and for decades, Tijuana has served as a temporary home for people from around the world.

A July report co-authored by Acer called “Dangerous Territory: Mexico Still Not Safe for Refugees” notes that there were “5,289 [documented] incidents of crime against migrants in 2016, including 921 crimes against migrants committed by federal or state officials.”

“Mexico certainly isn’t a safe third country,” says Acer. “The conditions for refugees in Mexico are horrendous right now.” The current system, which human rights experts date to 2011, “does not yet meet international standards.”

Time to build

Since 2011, Mexico has seen a 1,000 percent increase in claimants, says Mark Manly, a UNHCR official in Mexico.

“If there was a major jump in the numbers,” in a shorter period, Mr. Manly says, “Mexico would face major, major problems in term of asylum processing.”

Manly and his counterparts at COMAR, the Mexican refugee commission, are trying to do a lot with very little, including a budget of about $1.3 million.

Mexico says it is committed to addressing the gaps in its asylum system and to taking more refugees. But even with sufficient funds, that could take years.

“Building an asylum system takes time,” says Manly. “[It] takes not only money, but human resources and time.”

But, from the perspective of refugees like C., something is better than nothing.

“When migrants [leave their] countries,” C. says back at the Tijuana shelter, squinting in the hot sun, “it’s because we want to be better, we want to have better conditions. We want to work.”  

Reporting from Tijuana was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation. Whitney Eulich contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Each day, Deguène Gaye watches the ferry chug in from the mainland, disgorging a herd of sunburned tourists onto Gorée Island’s white-sand beaches.

From there, she knows, they’ll probably trace a familiar itinerary, following their guides somberly past a memorial to the transatlantic slave trade and then to the famous House of Slaves, a candy-pink building that claims to be the departure point for millions of Africans sent to the Americas.

After that, the groups will likely snap a few photos of the colorful colonial houses that line the cobblestone roads, and haggle for cheap tie-dye towels and wood sculptures from a seemingly never-ending procession of earnest proprietors.

“Madame, madame, please come inside. Looking is for free.”

“For you, mon frère, I make good price.”

And then, as quickly as they came, most of the visitors will be gone.  

“The tourists don’t leave their money here,” says Ms. Gaye, watching the waves froth over the rocky shore beside her house. “Tourism isn’t working for us.”

Gaye’s home sits just a few hundred yards from Gorée’s tourist trail. But she inhabits a different world. She lives in two rooms at the end of a crumbling colonial office building, whose windows are without glass and gaping. There is no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Two of her sons have recently left for the capital, Dakar, a 30-minute boat ride away, after failing to find work in their hometown.

Since Gorée was declared a “World Heritage Site” by UNESCO – the United Nations’ cultural agency – in 1978, its tourism industry has mushroomed. Tens of thousands of tourists visit the island each year. Among them: Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, and former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who wrote in the House of Slaves guestbook in 1991, “I have seen! I have been moved and shocked.”

But like at many of UNESCO’s 1,073 heritage sites, particularly those in the developing world, locals in Gorée have struggled to reap the benefits of the island’s fame. Each day, their community is overrun with tourists – and their garbage. But most of the jobs serving them – from guides to waiters to shopkeepers – have gone to mainlanders, locals say. Rules set by UNESCO and local heritage authorities guarding the structural integrity of heritage buildings, meanwhile, have made it prohibitively expensive to repair or upgrade the decaying colonial buildings where most of the island’s 1,700 residents still live.

“We have a saying here – the money leaves Gorée on the 4 o’clock ferry,” says Mansour Sow, who advises Gorée’s mayor on heritage development. The red tape around renovating heritage buildings has “left us with so many restrictions.”

'The spirit of this place has transformed'

Since 1972, the “world heritage” designation has been bestowed on sites around the world deemed to be of “outstanding universal value” to humanity. Its purpose, according to the UN, is to protect and promote humanity’s most important cultural and natural monuments, from Machu Picchu in Peru to India’s Taj Mahal and Colorado’s Mesa Verde. It has been hailed for pulling back some of the world’s most iconic cultural sites from ruin and neglect, and promoting tourism.

But in many places, particularly in the developing world, the label has come with unintended consequences.

In Laung Prabang, a postcard-worthy royal city in Laos, and Stone Town, the Zanzibari city of winding cobblestone alleyways and carved doors, the spike in tourism drove up the price of real estate and forced out many longtime residents to make way for hotels and souvenir stores. Casco Viejo, the old town of Panama City, saw thousands of long-time residents evicted or displaced by brisk gentrification after its 1997 listing.

Like in Gorée, the tourism business in these sites is frequently dominated by outsiders, from the businesspeople bankrolling restaurants and hotels to tour guides from other parts of the country. Often, little money makes it back into local communities. Locals, meanwhile, often complain the flood of tourists seeking an authentic cultural experience has, ironically, made the sites less authentic.

“This is one of the most beautiful islands in this country, but the spirit of this place has transformed,” says Modu Mballo, a lifelong Gorée resident who now squats in a rusted World War I bunker that he has transformed into an apartment and artists’ studio. “I’ve lost my privacy, I’ve lost my quietness, and for what?”

How much history?

Historians have raised another quibble with Gorée’s heritage listing, which claims that the island was “the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast.” Plaques hanging just inside the gates of the House of Slaves commemorate the “million of Africans” who passed through its infamous “door of no return” onto slaving ships.

That was the accepted story in the 1970s, when Gorée became a World Heritage Site as part of a drive by poet-president Léopold Senghor to promote Senegal’s rich history and cultural traditions on a global stage, according to Eloi Coly, the curator of the House of Slaves.

By the 1990s, however, research had unearthed a new history. "There are literally no historians who believe the Slave House is what they’re claiming it to be, or that believe Gorée was statistically significant in terms of the slave trade," Ralph Austen, a historian and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, told the Associated Press in 2013, after President Obama visited the site. The House of Slaves, most historians now believe, was simply a private residence. It may have housed slaves, but its door of no return was likely a trash chute used to jettison garbage into the ocean outside.

“It’s true that nowadays people know more about the history of slavery [than in the 1970s], but if even one slave passed through Gorée it’s still something we should talk about and remember every day,” argues Kabo Alioune, an assistant curator at the House of Slaves.

Heritage officials on Gorée have begun to quietly rebrand the island, speaking less of its particular role in the slave trade and more of the site as a “place of memory” for humanity to reflect on a dark chapter in its history, says Mr. Coly.

“We don’t teach the past so we can stand in the past – we do it so we can collectively build a better future,” he says.

But while they promote memory, tourism authorities must also focus on how to make Gorée’s popularity work better for those who live there, says Mr. Sow, the mayor’s adviser.

The island is rich in history, after all, he says. “But we need to bring more richness to its people.”

Thomas Faye contributed reporting. Ryan Lenora Brown’s reporting in Senegal was supported by the International Reporting Project. 

Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa via AP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is flanked by Bavarian Gov. Horst Seehofer (l.) and Social Democratic Party Chairman Martin Schulz as they arrive for a joint statement on forming a new German government in Berlin Jan. 12, 2018.

A year ago Chinese President Xi Jinping offered his vision of the world, one in which China plays the lead role in trade and other world affairs.

That speech was the keynote address at last year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This year President Trump will speak Jan. 26 at this annual forum of world leaders, sharing his views on international cooperation, informed by his oft-stated “America First” philosophy.

Will Mr. Trump define the place of the United States in the world narrowly, emphasizing that the US will act only if and when its national interests are clear and the benefits immediate? If he leaves that impression, other democracies will be left to wonder who will take up the mantle on behalf of all Western democracies against those with other agendas, such as the economically powerful but undemocratic regime in China, and the political and military maneuverings of Russia, which under President Vladimir Putin has shown willingness to use military might (Ukraine, Syria) to project its power and covert propaganda via social media to influence elections in democratic countries. 

Will Western Europe’s democracies provide alternative leadership and a broad, long-range vision of cooperation with the aim of preserving democratic principles, even when immediate individual national interests aren’t always served?

For some, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been offering that voice. As head of the largest and most dynamic economy in the European Union, she has looked to lead on thorny issues such as immigration by balancing the need for order and stability with the moral demand to help immigrants fleeing oppressive states. Rather than promoting a “Germany First” perspective, she’s made the case that EU states working together can create a better, stronger, freer Europe than when each state acts only in its own interests.

But 2017 was not a good year for Ms. Merkel. German elections strengthened opposition parties and have made forming a new governing coalition headed by her center-right Christian Democratic Union difficult. A first attempt to find other parties to join her CDU in a coalition failed in November. Now in mid-January a new effort to create a coalition of different partners looks as though it could succeed.

If the coalition holds, Merkel may yet appear at Davos, presumably to continue her message of mutual cooperation.

With her standing at home wobbling, however, Merkel may not be able to play her role as effectively. That task now may fall to a fresh face, French President Emmanuel Macron, whose speech at Davos will be closely watched to see just how broad his vision is of Europe and the world. 

Together with Merkel’s Germany, Mr. Macron’s France forms the vital core of the EU. He and Merkel seem to recognize that their close cooperation now is the key to not only EU stability, but world stability as well.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair continues to lead an effort to reverse Britain’s decision to leave the EU – that country’s cry of “Britain First” – scheduled for March 2019. A revote on “Brexit” is unlikely, but polls show that if it took place Brexit could lose. European Council President Donald Tusk recently told Britain the EU would welcome Britain’s return. “Our hearts are still open to you,” he said.

Britain’s strong pro-EU sentiments show a recognition that its fortunes will always be deeply entwined with those of brethren across the Channel. 

Complaints that the EU has taken unfair advantage of Britain, just as complaints that the US has been the victim of “bad deals” in the past with the rest of the world, need to be heard. But Benjamin Franklin’s counsel that “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately” may offer a deeper wisdom and a higher view.