HAS TRUMP SHATTERED THE WORLD ORDER?

The Global Effect of Naked Malevolence

Phuket，20 January 2026

Summary

U.S. foreign policy has long been coercive, illegal, and imperial. What has changed under the Trump II regime is the abandonment of any pretense of moral justification, revealing an unapologetic “might makes right” posture. This new nakedness, though shocking, is more a change in style, tone, and tempo than in historical behavior. By exposing the illusion of U.S. moral authority and 'leadership', Trump is in fact catalyzing the transition to a new, multi-polar world, necessarily grounded in international law, diplomacy, and peaceful cooperation.

In 2025, I went through something resembling the stages of grief, from incredulity, to anger, to near despondency about the state of geopolitics. I never reached the final stage though -- acceptance. Instead, it slowly dawned on me that it was more the style of U.S. foreign policy that had changed than the substance.

Did the US already have a history of bullying other countries to get what it wanted? Check. Did the US have a previous, long history of slapping on abusive tariffs when it felt like it? It sure did; after the USA's founding, tariffs were the sole source of revenue. It has launched tariff wars periodically ever since (see article).

Did the US already ignore international law whenever it wanted? Check. Did it refuse to sign or ratify scores of international treaties such as the Ottawa Treaty on landmines, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the only refusenik), the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court? Check.

Did it have a habit of withdrawing from UN agencies in a huff when it didn't get what it wanted, or refusing to pay its dues in order to extract even more concessions? Check. Did it have a record of regime change? Hah! The CIA has led over 100 such operations since 1947. That's what they do.

Did the US routinely invade countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, steal their resources or abduct their leaders? Ask Manuel Noriega of Panama, kidnapped by the U.S. military in 1990 and sentenced to 40 years in jail. Okay, he was a despicable character but it was still outrageously illegal. So too was the recent abduction of Venezuela's President Maduro. Ask Honduras, which has been invaded by the USA at least seven times (the first time to further the interests of US banana plantations!) Ask Grenada or Haiti or Cuba or Nicaragua.

Throughout its history, the USA has been consistently violent and very greedy. After a successful genocide of tens of millions of Native Americans, cooping up the survivors apartheid-style, the Thirteen Colonies broke away from Great Britain and annexed Vermont. Next, they purchased greater Louisiana from France (together with its thousands of slaves), and annexed West Florida from Spain. Then they annexed Texas, 'acquired' Oregon from Britain, 'extracted' the Mexican Cession, and claimed Baker, Howland and Jarvis Islands (for guano.)

In 1867, the year of Canada's independence, the USA bought Alaska from Russia, and annexed Midway. In 1898, they overthrew Hawaii's Queen to annex the islands on behalf of U.S. plantation owners, hungry for more land. 'Negotiations' then extracted the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain. The USA also took Eastern Samoa, the Panama Canal Zone and Guantánamo ('rented' from Cuba), annexed Kingman Reef and Swains Island, and occupied Kiribati. Then the Mariana Islands, Caroline Islands, and Marshall Islands also fell into U.S. hands. Let us not omit the USA's role in the U.K.'s annexation of Diego Garcia and expulsion of its entire population, so as to establish a joint military base there.

The USA has been at war for all but 17 years since its birth, or over 233 years, and in the process it has increased its total territory by 36 times.

What has really changed?

So, if this is all business as usual for the USA, conquering and so on, why does it feel like everything is so different under Trump II? The world's best geopolitical analysts (1), serve up cogent analyses: First and foremost, the dawning of a multi-polar world, ending the USA's post-Cold War undisputed hegemony. That new multi-polarity revolves of course around the new, second pole -- China. All of that is true. It explains much of Trump's erratic behaviour, railing against an inevitable future, against China -- indeed, against practically everyone. But China has been steadily rising and multi-polarity growing for decades now. Trump's re-election didn't suddenly discover these truths.

What has changed is the new nakedness, the now unconcealed, pure malevolence of US foreign policy and indeed U.S. governance as a whole. Far from pretending to uphold 'universal values' such as:

• respect for individual human rights,

• including freedom of speech,

• impartial justice,

• functioning houses of representatives,

• a free press,

• the 'rules-based order,'

• humanitarian aid, including drugs for HIV/AIDS

• poverty reduction,

• the development of poor countries,

• the promotion of multi-party democracy or

• the holding of 'free and fair elections.

We are instead witnessing, to paraphrase:

'We don't actually give a damn about any of that! We only care about ourselves! Might makes right, so we will take everything we can get from you, even your President and presidency if we want. Your oil? It's ours if we want it. We will even take your territory if we want it. Because we can. We are staying on top. We will continue to rule the entire world, by force.'

This is indeed a shock. It apparently stems from a single man without a moral compass. The conquering of Venezuela to take its oil, without even offering a flimsy moral pretext as before, is open imperialism from another age. The confrontation with Europe over Greenland stretches credulity. This is behaviour the U.S. has desisted from for several decades in preference for more torturous tactics. But it is a dramatic change in style, tone and tempo -- not in deeds.

Trump is an odious character, narcissistic, vindictive, ego-maniacal, intellectually mediocre, a sociopath.... In the immortal words of Jeffrey Epstein, years ago, Trump is 'borderline insane'. Jeffrey even wondered if Trump had 'early onset dementia' but in Donald's case, it started in his 20's. Somehow this most prolific liar in human history, has revealed the stark truth about his country. It is that revelation which has been so disturbing, the shattering of an illusion for so many around the world.

Could naked US malevolence turn out to be good?

There is no doubt that the Trump II regime is currently undermining respect for the UN Charter and the sovereignty of nations. As Trump put it to the New York times, "I don't need international law." That is of course wrong. Even great powers need order, not anarchy. Precedent matters and violations of sovereignty invite others to do the same. It is for this reason they are rare. For instance, when Russia took Crimea it pointed to how the US-led Western alliance had taken Kosovo from Serbia.

Why then do I remain optimistic? It is because I think Trump's atrocious example, his bald return to imperialism, is a wake up call -- an important reminder of what a less civilized world order is like, and the illusion of fairness we have been living under. When he and his merry band are gone, as they soon will be, the world will breathe a sigh of relief, thinking 'I'm glad that's over.' They will have been the exception that proves global rule of law is the only viable future. We will emerge from this crisis more convinced than ever of the importance of systematized international cooperation, foremost in the United Nations, but also in other organizations like the World Trade Organization. Diplomacy, not the exercise of raw power, is the only sane method of resolving disputes, even for crazed leviathans.

After 80 years of US domination, all the while maintaining they had the moral high ground, that domination and that illusion of moral authority are now dissolved, along with the very idea that a single lead country can provide global order. No other country, not even China, will try to 'replace' the United States as hegemon, and that is a very good thing.

There are unmistakable signs that the world is moving past the USA. Trump's more than 600 impulsive changes to US tariffs have shown the world that protecting global trade is a must, now led in this respect by China and the rest of BRICS. World trade grew by 7% in 2025 compared to 2024, equivalent to US$ 35 trillion at market rates. In contrast, US total trade fell from $5.3 trillion to 4.7 trillion. Yes, Its trade deficit did shrink -- but only by $150 billion. The bigger point is that it's share of global trade shrank by 11% in a year when total world trade apart from the USA grew by 11%.

Witness the signing of the EU/Mercosur free trade agreement, one of the biggest such trade deals in history, suddenly finalized after 25 years of glacial negotiations. Witness the welcome detente between China and Canada, which has dropped its tariffs on Chinese EVs from 100% to 6% while China resumes purchasing Canadian canola oil and seafood. Witness the beginning of mobilization of symbolic European troops to Greenland to defend it from the USA! The world is in fact coming together without the USA, with reaffirmed commitment to freer trade, continuing globalization, and greater international cooperation.

We'll get through whatever the Trump regime throws at us in the next three years. He won't drag us into WWIII, despite recklessly skirting that precipice. Then he'll be gone. What he will have accomplished is to shatter once and for all the fiction that the 'rules-based international order' was ever fair or even 'rules-based'. As Prime Minister Carney put it in a speech at Davos yesterday:

"For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. [...] We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim."

The breaking of that illusion of many decades is a major step forward. Having realized the deep flaws of the fiction we have been living by, we may now finally get on with the task of building a better-functioning, multi-polar order. This will be an order no longer based on hegemonic hypocrisy, but rather on much fairer application of international law, and much greater use of professional diplomacy to achieve mutual understanding and peaceful compromises. This could be the dawning of a much better world.

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1) See for instance, Jeffrey Sachs，John Mearsheimer and Yan Xuetong.

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