On the first day of the United Nations general assembly this week, two world leaders outlined competing visions for the future. Donald Trump’s speech was disturbingly familiar to those he’s given before: a litany of false boasts and odd tangents, peppered with grim military threats against a variety of nation states. Discussing his seven-month war with Iran, he mused over whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly”.

In Trump’s eyes, the world is there to be ruled – and ruled only by the US, whose economy is “the envy of the world” and military is “the most powerful on Earth”.

A couple of hours later, Emmanuel Macron took to the podium to offer an alternative. In a full-throated defence of international law, multilateralism and the rules-based order, the French president said we were living in a “new era of barbaric acts”. He directly criticised Russia and Israel, but much of it was clearly aimed at Trump. “They say might is right … but we will not yield,” he argued. “We cannot simply accept this new order of impunity which some are trying to erect … Do we want to live under … the law of the jungle or do we want to live in a civilised international society?”

Importantly, he also acknowledged the west’s “permanent temptation to espouse double standards”. “How many times have we heard that people’s sovereignty has value in Europe, but if we look at the Middle East and Africa, it is less valuable,” he asked. “No, that is unacceptable … A life is a life. Peace and security are indivisible, and everyone has a 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........

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