When America Stops Leading: Trump 2.0 and the Unravelling of the Global Order

For most of the post-Second World War era, American power rested not only on economic strength or military might, but on the assumption shared by allies and foes alike: that the United States would act as a leader establishing rule-based order. The US leadership was exercised less by coercion than by restraint. It was through institutions, norms, and commitments that even the most powerful State was bound. The first year of President Trump’s second term has placed that assumption under strain.

A state’s foreign policy has always been susceptible to leadership changes. The USA, led by Trump 2.0, has made significant changes in just one year of his tenure that eclipse the achievements of the recent Administrations—keeping allies and foes alike on their toes. Putting the liberal world order to the test by distancing itself from international organisations and agreements, setting a wrong precedent by intervening in Venezuela, and using tariffs as both tools of negotiation and coercion. Renewed unilateral rhetoric regarding Greenland challenges the established norm of sovereignty. Every succeeding action by the administration builds on the previous one, both in intensity and in the damage it inflicts on the current cooperation-based liberal world order.

The pattern is not accidental. It reflects a worldview in which international institutions are not instruments of leadership but constraints on power; in which cooperation is valuable only when it yields immediate, asymmetric gains. The result is not American retrenchment but redefinition of leadership itself from stewardship to transaction and from consent to coercion. Nowhere is it more evident than in Trump’s withdrawal from international organisations that uphold democracy, freedom, human rights, environmental protection, and the rule of law. His blanket withdrawal from the climate regime, legal bodies, and the cooperative security framework follows a common logic: multilateralism is acceptable until it dilutes American supremacy.

Environmental cooperation, in particular, has been recast as contrary to US interests rather than essential to global and national security.

The posture is more alarming in the area where collective action is not optional. Climate change does not recognise boundaries, nor does public health. The decision to disengage from global environmental governance sends a clear signal that short-term political gains are more valued than long-term planetary health. The same logic underpins the withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, allegations of the WHO’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its inability to demonstrate independence. The world has just witnessed the dire consequences of a global pandemic. The USA’s withdrawal from the WHO at a crucial point is contrary to the lessons learnt from the pandemic.

Without cooperation, transparency and shared responsibility, pathogens thrive and multiply. The President’s mandate to fortify biosecurity nationally cannot substitute the need for global surveillance and cooperation. It raises an important question about the kinds of arrangements international organisations need to adopt to incorporate the rising influence of developing countries without provoking the perception in the US that influence is lost rather than shared.

If disengagement from institutions signals indifference to rules, recent actions in Venezuela suggest a willingness to override them altogether. As a necessary step to restore democracy and safeguard US security, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arrested and taken to New York to face narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons charges. However, to many observers, the episode has reinforced perceptions of selective legality—of international law invoked when convenient and disregarded when constraining. It goes against customary international law regarding the sovereign immunity of a sitting head of State. Official statements framing the intervention in terms of migration control, security, and energy needs have done little to dispel scepticism, particularly in a country whose vast oil reserves have long attracted external interest. The broader message is difficult to ignore: when multilateral cooperation fails to deliver immediate returns, unilateral action becomes preferable.

Trump’s tariff measures reflect a trend towards protectionism, in which states seek to shield their trade from fair competition. The US has been imposing exorbitant, selectively applied tariffs that are at odds with the GATT and WTO charters. Using tariffs both as a negotiating tool and as a coercive measure against states is ineffective. States may give up to coercion for now, but they will look to diversify their market access.

The contradiction is striking. Globalisation has given the developed West open-market access at a time when developing countries’ industrial capacities were nascent, yet as developing countries like China and India build their capacities and are ready to offer fair competition, these tariffs suggest a double standard by the West. Trump’s curb on H-1B visas undermines the very logic of globalisation, which enabled the seamless flow of talent, ideas, and innovation across different geographies and cultures in pursuit of comparative advantage.

Taken together, these US policies reveal a more profound unease with an international order that no longer guarantees disproportionate returns. The institutions the West helped create functioned smoothly when power asymmetries were stark. As those asymmetries narrow, the demand for equality within multilateral frameworks increases, creating a perception of loss in Washington rather than an evolution. Trump’s withdrawal from international organisations and his establishment of the ‘Board of Peace’ suggest a desire to endow the US with a centralised authority. Reflecting Washington’s desire not to abandon leadership, but to reshape it on terms that preserve unilateral advantage.

As the world prepares for President Trump’s next 1000 days, it becomes clear that nothing matters more than brute force in the international order. Rules and orders issued by powerful countries remain effective as long as they confer an unfair advantage. When the United States treats rules as conditional, it weakens the normative foundations of the system as a whole. Other states learn quickly. Bargaining replaces obligation; power supplants principle. These actions may erode trust, and this does not end when administrations change. Moral appeals carry little weight in a system increasingly governed by transactional logic. It does not mean the world is entering a post-American era. American power remains formidable.

However, leadership divorced from restraint produces a different kind of order—an order which is less stable, less predictable, and more tolerant of coercion. The tragedy is not that rivals are challenging the rules, but that the State that once enforced them now questions whether the current order is worth upholding. In abandoning the language of stewardship, the United States risks discovering that influence, once lost, is far harder to reclaim than power ever was.