Trump is forcing the world into a new era of disorder
The tariff campaign is Mr. Trump’s campaign against Washington’s World War II. It is only one end of his attack on the laws and institutions designed to further his own power and privilege after World War II. The world is now grappling with what it means for the reigning global leader to abandon the system designed to maintain his dominance. With no plan for what comes next and no natural successor, the United States is not only accelerating its own collapse but also forcing the world into a new era of disorder.
Throughout modern history, wars have devastated global systems, and new structures have subsequently emerged. Following World War II, America and its allies devised an approach to managing relations between nations in hopes of restoring prosperity to the devastated world and preventing future conflicts. While the United Nations remains the primary governing body, over time other rules and institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, have been built alongside it. The United States, at the height of its power and the only Allied nation to avoid the destruction of all-out war, became the leader and operator of this new world order.
The post-World War II system was successful precisely because it also served America’s partners. Political, economic and security cooperation has created stability, predictability and political and economic gains for many countries. Washington accepted constraints on its own power because it recognized that engaging other countries was a more effective strategy than coercion in advancing its global goals. While this global order is undoubtedly flawed and in many ways outdated, it still gave Washington an advantage when Mr. Trump took office for a second term in January.
Now the Trump administration is waging a systematic burning campaign. “The post-war global order is not only obsolete; it is now a weapon used against us,” Marco Rubio said at his secretary of state confirmation hearing in January. Instead of free and open trade, the administration has enacted crippling tariffs, punishing not only trade rule violators like China but also American allies and American consumers with higher prices resulting from the tariffs.
Instead of defending sovereignty and the principle of non-aggression, Mr. Trump threatened military action against Venezuela but took no concrete action when Russia violated NATO airspace. Mr. Trump has courted autocratic leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Mr. Xi and Kim Jong Un, while suggesting that Washington may not defend its democratic allies. This is a stunning act of superpower suicide: Never before has the world’s reigning superpower deliberately dismantled a system designed to maintain its leadership, especially when these traps provide enormous benefits. This era will not end with a single jolt – a kind of Big Bang event that gives birth to historically new world orders. Instead, the next few years are almost certain to be a chaotic interregnum whose contours are beginning to become clear. Even if capricious and performative, the United States will remain immensely powerful. The old institutions will undoubtedly survive: the UN will still meet and judges will hear cases at the World Trade Organization, but the capacity of member states to overcome their natural tendencies towards competition and conflict will diminish. From pandemics to climate change to artificial intelligence, common challenges may remain largely unaddressed.
A more disorderly world will almost certainly be a more violent world. This has been a bloody year, including armed conflicts in South and Southeast Asia, Israeli attacks in Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, as well as wars in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza. The Trump administration has joined Israel in its war against Iran and has launched its own attacks against the Houthis and in the Caribbean. Mr. Trump claims he wants peace, but with the exception of the recent Gaza ceasefire, he appears focused on lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize rather than on the sustained implementation that ensures peace agreements stick.
These conflicts can also spread to the economic sphere. As nationalism and mercantilism replace the prevailing premium on free and open trade, America leads the way with the highest tariffs in a century. Economic fragmentation will not only slow global growth but also pit countries against each other in the race to acquire resources, from critical minerals to advanced semiconductors.
The world will need a new regulatory power. There’s no sign of anyone coming. As China gains power, it is ill-equipped to take on the American mantle. Beijing seeks a safe world for autocracy, one that allows it to consolidate party control at home and extend its influence abroad without interference. But they have no actionable plans for how to reduce conflict, ensure financial stability, or manage transnational threats such as nuclear proliferation.
America’s democratic allies in Asia and Europe can band together to preserve what they can of the liberal international order. Taken together, they weigh as much as America in terms of GDP. However, domestic resistance to increasing defense budgets in an increasingly difficult economic environment may hinder their ambitions.
Years from now, an American president may have the opportunity to work with other global leaders to build a new international order and blunt China’s gains. They will face the closest thing to a geopolitical clean slate we have seen since 1945. A new vision could turn disorder into an opportunity for reinvention: by deepening technological, economic, and security cooperation with selected American allies; seeding innovative approaches to economic development; or to create institutions that include leading companies as well as countries. Political candidates preparing for that moment today must start by accepting that things will not be the same as they were before.
