Is Trump reshaping the world order?

President Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy moves have sent shockwaves across the international community. Brookings scholars examine how these actions are disrupting long-established norms—and what that means for the United States and the international order.

President Donald Trump considers the very idea of international order a “cloud-castle abstraction.” His foreign policy project is not to reshape the post-World War II international order. It is to assert that the United States should not be, and to demonstrate that it will not be, restrained in its exercise of economic and military power. This, he says, is what a “clear-eyed” view of international politics requires.

The post-World War II international order the Trump administration derides as a fatuous abstraction was created because almost 100 million people—one of every 23 humans on Earth at the time—died during the 20th century’s two world wars. The purpose of the order was to prevent such incomprehensible devastation from happening again. This meant agreeing to minimize the use of economic tools—like tariffs—that helped one’s own nation by harming others. It also meant not allowing militarily strong states to believe they could attack militarily weaker ones without fear of a collective response. These principles were put into practice through free-trade arrangements, widespread membership in the United Nations, and defensive military alliances like NATO.

Between 1945 and 2024, the United States was a champion, albeit a variable and imperfect one, of these principles. Trump is now attacking them by using economic policy with the express purpose of doing harm to others, by devaluing U.S. alliances, and by repeatedly threatening military conquest. If these actions are not met with resistance by other states, then international politics could revert to the dynamics that produced the world wars. And all nations should be clear-eyed about the consequences of that.

Trump may be the meme-worthy poster boy and accelerant of our new age of disruption, but he is more symptom than cause. Other powers, large and small, are working to erode the current order. Vladimir Putin prefers a tripolar world that Moscow can shape competitively with Washington and Beijing; failing that, he creates chaos and thrives on anarchy. Xi Jinping wants to upend East Asia’s security arrangements and seeks a world order with Chinese characteristics. Countries like India and Brazil want to be poles in a multipolar world, which is not likely to be a world safe for multilateralism.

Paying inordinate attention to Trump or other state actors, however, can blind us to other disruptive forces reshaping the world “order.” Many companies still want to “move fast and break things.” Super-empowered groups like the Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Sinaloa drug cartel, or the APT41 cyber-criminal gang want to sow terror, extort societies, or force political change.

Many consequences of human activity amplify the disruptive nature of our era. The frequency and severity of epidemics are increasing. Climate change is a threat multiplier. Urbanization and demographic shifts are straining resources. Critical societal functions are increasingly susceptible to disturbances, interruptions, and shutdowns.

These forces are widening economic disparities, sparking social unrest, and displacing millions. They are undermining confidence in the capacity of existing institutions to cope, opening the door to demagogues who promise quick solutions and illiberal answers.

The new age of disruption is about more than one man, even a U.S. president. Trump’s contribution has been to make the United States government more problem than solution. He is better at tearing down than building up. But we should be clear-eyed that these challenges will continue after he is gone.

The “world order” we have known for 80 years was, in reality, a set of arrangements designed primarily by the United States and Europe to manage the unfamiliar dynamics of a world that had gone off the rails. It worked brilliantly, but because many of its mechanisms and tools are inadequate to the age of disruption, the values that underpinned the system are now being questioned as well. That is our true battleground—ensuring that respect for human rights, rule of law, and liberal democracy remains the central operating system of a new order reengineered to address the unfamiliar challenges of a disruptive age.

Trump is testing, and in important respects reshaping, the foundations of the postwar order by redefining what counts as security and by treating long-standing relationships as transactional rather than as real commitments. Trade, tariffs, and market leverage have become central instruments of his “America First” strategy. Trump himself argues that economic policy is national security policy. In doing so, he has already altered the perimeter of what the United States and its partners understand to be the core of geopolitical competition.

A world order anchored in alliances and rules depends on trust, not only in American intentions but also in the durability of U.S. institutions and the predictability of its economic stewardship. That trust has long underpinned the dollar’s role, the appeal of U.S. financial markets, and the broader legitimacy of a system built on the fair application of American laws and regulations. As that confidence dissipates, investors and governments hedge. There is no true alternative to the dollar today: Europe remains an incomplete financial and political union, and China’s renminbi lacks credibility as a freely trusted reserve asset. Still, the recent spike in gold and silver prices reflects a search for safety in a world where institutional anchors feel less secure.

Trump’s apparent disregard for existing institutions is symbolized by his creation of a “Board of Peace,” even as the United States holds the G20 presidency. The move signals a weakening commitment to the architecture Washington itself built to advance U.S. values and worldview. That has implications for the International Monetary Fund and other crisis-response mechanisms. In the next global shock, would the United States still be able and willing to lead a coordinated response as it did in 2008?

Over the next three years, the effect may be less a gradual erosion than an accelerating break from the status quo. Once trust is weakened, reassessment can happen quickly, as governments and markets price in a more transactional United States and a less reliable institutional anchor. In that environment, fragmentation becomes self-reinforcing: partners diversify, alternative arrangements deepen, and the habits of cooperation that once felt automatic begin to fade.

Once those ties loosen, they are not easily restored. Trump’s approach may therefore not only pull the United States away from the order it built but also push others to accelerate what they have postponed. Europe, long reluctant to complete the reforms needed to make the euro a true competitor to the dollar, may finally feel compelled to act. The result could be a faster move toward a more contested, less U.S.-centered system than many assume is possible.

President Donald Trump is not rebuilding the global order—he is unmistakably disrupting it. And for a surprising number of countries outside the collective West, that disruption is not unwelcome.

Trump’s “Board of Peace,” unveiled in Davos with fanfare and little institutional substance, is unlikely to replace the United Nations or generate serious or sustainable conflict-resolution mechanisms. Yet the interest it has drawn from significant middle powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan is telling. These countries, mostly autocracies with a few exceptions, have long felt marginalized, lectured, or excluded from the Western-led international system.

Trump seems to offer something different. He does not promise rules, norms, or institutions. Instead, he offers access, visibility, and transactional relevance. In that sense, the Board of Peace resembles a loose, personalized alternative to existing multilateral formats—a Trumpian version of BRICS—organized not around values or democracy, but around shared grievances with the status quo. 

This marks a fundamental shift in global politics. Trump is not creating a new order; he is validating the perception that the old one, led by the United States, is dysfunctional, hypocritical, and tilted toward European interests only. Many governments welcome him precisely because they do not expect coherence or moral leadership—only disruption. They also know that in Trump’s universe, they are free to hedge or play footsies with other great powers. This is not an exclusive relationship. 

The Board of Peace is unlikely to endure. But it signals a deeper shift: a growing number of states now see disruption itself as a strategy. In validating their resentment without offering a path forward, Trump may hasten the decline of the transatlantic alliance and the global institutions he disparages—leaving behind not a new order, but a vacuum increasingly filled by power, proximity, and deals.

Within the first year of his second administration, Trump bulldozed down the post-World War II order and U.S. leadership in it. Even though the United States’ closest allies, Canada and other NATO countries, cannot completely sever relations with the United States for the foreseeable future, because of their dependence on U.S. defense and economy, the damage is irreparable. They will start diversifying their relations, including softening their stance toward China, and building other partnerships. The United States may try to bully them, but it will be increasingly let adrift alone.

The second Trump administration has been extreme in threatening the annexation of a NATO partner’s territory, supporting far-right parties in Europe with the goal of undermining liberalism, imposing tariffs at the president’s whim, and withdrawing from the very international institutions the United States fostered for decades. It has also torched U.S. soft power, not just by liquidating U.S. foreign aid and democracy promotion around the world, but by its own conduct at home. However, hypocritical and haphazard the United States often was in its human rights commitments abroad, its internal commitment to civil liberties—above all, freedom of speech—and to checks and balances had been a beacon over the past 60 years.

Although the second Trump administration is fully unbound by norms and institutions, it follows the serious damage inflicted by both the first Trump administration and the George W. Bush administration. Each, in different ways, progressively threatened the international order: the Bush administration by invading Iraq on the basis of politicized intelligence, dragging allies into a bloody quagmire while disparaging “old Europe”; and the first Trump administration by signaling its unpredictable and deleteriously self-centered inclinations, including its willingness to cozy up to Vladimir Putin. The Bush administration may be dismissed as an aberration and the first Trump administration as a vagary, but taken together with the second Trump administration, they reveal an unmistakable pattern: the United States can no longer be trusted to moderate its behavior through norms, institutions, and enlightened self-restraint in the service of a better world for all.

Trump will be remembered as a transitional figure, but not a transformative one. He is accelerating the transition away from a U.S.-led international order, but he lacks the vision, discipline, and leadership to bring countries together around a plan for what comes next.

The future shape of the international system remains unclear. Nobody can foretell if we are entering a bipolar or multipolar system, a concert of powers, spheres of influence, a more anarchic international system, or some blended combination of these options.

This moment is characterized more by the rise in populism and protectionism than by the emergence of a new international system. The world’s two major powers, the United States and China, are focused on reducing interdependencies and seeking greater self-reliance. Canada, India, the European Union, Japan, Korea, and other powers are turning toward each other to build insulation against the predations of major powers.

Pundits will construct narratives for explaining this moment. Some will describe a power transition from American to Chinese leadership. Others will frame the moment as the world minus one, with America missing in action. Both these narratives are premature at best. China is consumed by its own political, economic, and social challenges. And the world will not organize itself without strong leaders capable of compelling countries to sacrifice narrow interests in service of a global vision. It took a great depression, two world wars, and an unrivaled hegemon to reach such a point in 1945. It may be a while before another analogous moment arrives.

The Trump administration appears Janus-faced when it comes to the United Nations. In a single day during the September 2025 U.N. General Assembly, Trump both complained that the organization was not living up to its “tremendous potential” and assured U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres that he was “100%” behind the U.N. With only minor tweaks, Mike Waltz’s July 2025 testimony at his Senate confirmation hearing could have been delivered by any candidate, from either party, to lead the U.S. mission to the U.N. A month later, the administration yanked back approved funding to the U.N.

Trump’s comments on his so-called “Board of Peace,” launched in Davos on January 22, embody this schizophrenia. Trump speculated both that his board “might” replace the U.N., and that it will work “in conjunction” with the U.N. The announced U.S. withdrawal from 66 international entities largely left the U.N.’s peace and security architecture untouched. Rather than slash funding entirely, the United States continues to support piecemeal U.N. activities, including peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts, albeit at reduced levels (and ignoring soaring arrears in U.S. assessed, or mandatory, contributions).

Significantly, the Trump administration turned to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for endorsement of two high-profile initiatives: a gang suppression force for Haiti, authorized under Resolution 2793, and endorsement of Trump’s Gaza peace plan, endorsed in Resolution 2803. In seeking UNSC mandates, the administration tacitly conceded that U.N. authorization still matters—for legitimacy, burden-sharing, and global buy‑in.

Those resolutions crystallize how the Trump administration views the U.N.: useful for one-off tasks and invaluable as a global stage on which Trump can perform during the annual General Assembly speeches, but of little interest as the guardian of principles like the peaceful resolutions of disputes and sovereign equality.

The uncomfortable truth is that the United Nations, indeed the entire post-World War II order, rested less on underlying “rules” than on the willingness of great powers to restrain themselves. Washington, like other great powers, has not always observed this in practice. But a system built on the expectation of self-restraint—and long underwritten by the United States—will inevitably weaken under a president openly contemptuous of any limits on his power.

The world has always been shaped by power politics. What made the postwar order unusual was that the most powerful state in the system tried—however imperfectly—to act as a stabilizing force and a reliable ally, investing in institutions and relationships that extended beyond narrow transactional gain.

To be sure, American history is littered with contradictions, hypocrisy, and episodes of profound injustice at home and abroad. Yet in its strongest moments, the United States sought to align power with purpose: rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan, anchoring security through NATO, and helping stabilize Asia through alliance commitments and postwar reconstruction in Japan and South Korea.

American influence rested not just on military or economic strength, but on soft power. Admiration for U.S. society—its openness, diversity, innovative capacity, and the promise of the American dream—often softened the blowback from foreign policy failures. Even when Washington stumbled, many around the world still wanted to work with it.

Trump has done more than challenge this tradition; he has eroded it. His approach to the world has been unusually brazen, openly transactional, and corrosive of credibility. By threatening tariffs on impulse, questioning security commitments, and flouting well-established international norms, he has hollowed out U.S. credibility in ways that will be difficult to reverse.

China has tried to capitalize on this moment, presenting itself as a responsible great power and defender of global stability. Yet Beijing is unlikely to replace the United States as a global leader, at least not in the way the United States has traditionally played that role. China’s priorities remain centered on self-strengthening and its core interests, with little inclination to shoulder the burdens of global stewardship.

The result is not a clean transition, but an international system adrift. Whether the United States ever returns to its former role remains uncertain. Some argue it never will. But there is another possibility: that after experiencing the costs of retreat—greater instability, diminished influence, and damage to concrete U.S. interests—future American leaders may again conclude that disengagement carries a higher price than leadership.

Follow the money. Whether chaotically levying tariffs, capturing the president of Venezuela, threatening the sovereignty of Greenland, or establishing the so-called “Board of Peace,” Trump’s chief motive is securing riches for his family, loyal coterie, and corporate donors. In so doing, Trump has decisively upended what already was a fragile post-Cold War “rules-based” international order, compromised by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s wanton destruction of Gaza.

Unlike America’s European allies, who spent the first year of the American president’s second term seesawing between fits of pique and periods of accommodation, the major powers in the Middle East and North Africa immediately understood how to curry favor in Washington. These countries’ leaders have no meaningful domestic checks on their power and are doubtless relieved that the United States no longer values universal principles such as respect for basic human rights. The wealthy Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—were among the first to use gifts, flattery, deals with the Trump family, and promises of major investments in the United States, to secure the president’s positive regard. Trump’s “Board of Peace”—of which he is the forever chairman and whose charter omits any mention of Gaza—contradicts the language embodied in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803 and is little more than a thinly veiled exercise in further rent extraction. With the “Board of Peace” seeking to supplant the United Nations, we have (re)entered the unconstrained “might makes right” and “to the victor go the spoils” era.

For decades, U.S. leaders attached vital importance to the transatlantic relationship with Europe. Trump does not. That bodes ill for American security and economic interests.

Trump downplays or ignores key facts: NATO has connected the United States to its closest allies for more than 70 years, ensuring peace in Europe, which is by far America’s largest trade and investment partner. Over the past month, Trump talked scornfully of NATO, spoke of taking Greenland from Denmark, threatened capricious tariffs on European allies, and denigrated the contribution of allied soldiers to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Trump’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy eschew traditional language on NATO’s import. They postulate the United States as less of an alliance member and more as a mediator between Europe and Russia, while emphasizing a shift in burden-sharing so that Europe deters Russia largely on its own.

European leaders may well conclude that Trump means it. If “America First” translates to “Europe Alone,” what should Americans expect?

First, a Europe that develops greater capacity to defend itself could well be a Europe less amenable to meeting U.S. security concerns. It will also buy more European arms, and less American. (If, on the other hand, Europe fails to develop that capacity, it may make accommodations with Russia inimical to U.S. interests.)

Second, Washington has already placed the burden of supporting Ukraine against Russia squarely on the Europeans. A Europe that feels more broadly left alone to deal with and deter Russia will likely be less responsive to U.S. requests for support in dealing with a rising China.

Third, a Europe that remains subject to arbitrary U.S. tariffs will likely respond with tariffs on American exports and, following Canada’s example, diversify its trade relations, including with China.

How would any of this be good for the United States?

The apparent rupture of the liberal rules-based world order might seem to be a net win for Russia, which seeks to collect maximum possible gains from its crime of aggression against Ukraine. For years, Moscow has sought to advance the proposition of a “multipolar world” as an alternative to Western dominance, and some Russian experts argued that Trump was a perfect demolition man of liberal norms and deliverer of multipolarity. Presently, however, the Russian leadership has started to discover that the world in which state power is the main determinant of influence in the global arena is far from beneficial for Russia, since its capacity for projecting power is in steep decline.

Russia’s apparent inability to protect the tankers in its “shadow fleet” is a minor issue that has nonetheless exposed a deeper problem: the growing shortage of most elements of modern power that underpin world status. Russia cannot partake in the competition for building artificial intelligence data centers and focuses instead on curtailing domestic access to the internet. In the new space race, Russia is reduced to a distant third, managing only 17 space rocket launches in 2025, five times fewer than China and way below the 180 U.S. launches.

The long-cherished Russian ambition of being a peer competitor to the United States is incompatible with the reality of new world power contests. The main adversary for Vladimir Putin’s Russia is, in fact, Europe, which is resolutely upholding liberal-democratic norms. The Kremlin may hope for further erosion of transatlantic ties, but in the confrontation with a reenergized and rearming Europe, it is a designated loser. 

Foreign policy has presented a series of challenges to Keir Starmer. Not least, the prime minister came to power intent on forging close relations both with the United Kingdom’s largest trading partner—the European Union (EU)—and its closest security partner—the United States.

Starmer has played a rotten hand pretty well. Trump notwithstanding, the U.K. had managed to maintain good relations with the United States while pursuing its “reset” of relations with the EU.

Recent events, however, will really put that balancing act to the test. Starmer had no choice but to react to Trump’s statements on Greenland by reaffirming his belief in Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty. Unlike some, however, he did not talk about any form of retaliation should Trump ignore these pleas. When the president went on to argue that America’s allies shied away from the front line in Afghanistan, this proved too much. The prime minister described the remarks as “insulting and frankly appalling” and suggested that Trump should apologize. These were by far the most critical comments made by a prime minister who has shown remarkable forbearance for whatever provocations have emanated from the White House.

It is hard to overstate how parlous the situation facing the U.K. is. It is massively dependent—as Starmer himself said in a televised address last week—on the United States for its defense, intelligence, and nuclear capabilities. But geography dictates that it shares geostrategic interests with the EU. Avoiding a choice has been a fundamental principle of British foreign policy since the Second World War.

Starmer had little choice but to say what he did about both Greenland and the role of U.K. forces in Afghanistan. He must now hope that doing so has not forced upon him the choice that he—and successive prime ministers before him—have avoided to date.

At last week’s Davos Economic Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described a “rupture in the world order.” Many observers agree that Trump is not reshaping, but destroying, the current global order. His disregard for international rules and norms in recent weeks has strained U.S. alliances and partnerships. Repeated threats to seize Greenland have unsettled NATO allies and prompted renewed questioning about the future of transatlantic relations. In the Indo-Pacific, U.S. allies, despite successfully negotiating lower tariffs and committing to increased defense spending, also remain uncertain about Washington’s long-term commitment to the region.

Yet some aspects of the liberal international order may be more resilient than others, including the U.S.-led “hub-and-spokes” bilateral alliance system in Asia. Despite Trump’s periodic public scourging of alliances, the State Department and Pentagon still see allies as important if not “essential” to regional security. As the Pentagon stated in its recently released National Defense Strategy, “In the Indo-Pacific, where our allies share our desire for a free and open regional order, allies and partners’ contributions will be vital to deterring and balancing China.”

Alliances are what enable the United States to maintain a significant force presence in the region. They enhance deterrence and give Washington a durable strategic advantage over Beijing. Likewise, shared (if uneven) threat perceptions of China and North Korea provide Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, and Canberra strong incentives to sustain the hub-and-spokes system, even as they pursue new strategic partnerships and multilateral coalitions in response to the complexities of geopolitical competition. Whether U.S. allies can still trust Washington as a reliable security partner is a valid question in a broken, more fragmented global order. But remnants of the postwar alliance system in Asia are likely to remain for some time.