Since returning to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has assailed the world order created by the United States after World War II. He has challenged the sovereignty of allies and partners by threatening to acquire Greenland, annex Canada, and seize the Panama Canal. His global trade war is designed to benefit the United States at the expense of all its trading partners. He has withdrawn from the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization.
In dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Trump administration has abandoned long-standing bipartisan commitments to international development. And his treatment of Ukraine—his attempt to hound the Ukrainians toward a peace deal rather than use American might to compel Russia to the table—humiliated the weaker and wronged party and courted the aggressor.
Trump believes that might makes right. As he posted in April on Truth Social, “THE GOLDEN RULE OF NEGOTIATING AND SUCCESS: HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES.”
The world order and the institutions the United States created after World War II were all designed to resist that logic, and to ensure that the strong could not simply do what they can and force the weak to suffer as they must. But Trump has no time for such high-mindedness. Instead, he has vindicated the cynical view that the United States was never the altruistic and idealistic power it claimed to be.
For those who still believe in a principled and generous United States, this is a traumatic moment of cognitive dissonance. The reality of Trump’s administration—the contempt for law both at home and abroad, the bullying, the abrogation of agreements and treaties, the threats against allies, and the cuddling up to tyrants—is plain to see. But it still seems incredible. Some observers search for a benign explanation.
Perhaps, they imagine, Trump is playing four-dimensional chess and his outrageous actions are just part of a shrewd master plan. Others cling to the hope that something will change the course of events, a plot twist to keep things on track before the show goes off the rails.
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