Trump ending the postwar security order

Having read extensively about international security and the post-WWII US-backed security order, it is very disturbing to see it all being smashed apart. From Foreign Affairs today:

Carrying out economic warfare on allies sows distrust and risks fracturing the transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security architectures that have underpinned global stability for decades. If Washington imposes tariffs on European and Asian allies, it will create a wedge that adversaries such as China and Russia will eagerly exploit. Beijing, for example, is seeking to drive a deeper divide between the U.S. and Europe by presenting itself as a more reliable economic partner. For its part, Moscow is capitalizing on transatlantic tensions to weaken NATO cohesion. The growing strategic partnership between these two authoritarian powers—cemented through military cooperation, economic agreements, and shared hostility toward the West—represents a direct challenge to the U.S.-led global order. By undermining trust with allies through indiscriminate economic aggression, Washington risks isolating itself at a time when maintaining strong, unified alliances is more critical than ever.

I think my work on regional nuclear weapons proliferation is going to become a lot more pertinent-seeming in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

12 thoughts on “Trump ending the postwar security order”

  7. Order rests on a stable distribution of power among states, norms that influence and legitimize the conduct of states and other actors, and institutions that help underpin it. The Trump administration has rocked all these pillars. The world may be entering a period of disorder, one that settles only after the White House changes course or once a new dispensation takes hold in Washington. But the decline underway may not be a mere temporary dip; it may be a plunge into murky waters. In his erratic and misguided effort to make the United States even more powerful, Trump may bring its period of dominance—what the American publisher Henry Luce first called “the American century”—to an unceremonious end.

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/end-long-american-century-trump-keohane-nye

  8. More than half of people in key U.S. allies – including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and Japan – have no confidence in President Trump’s leadership in world affairs, according to a new global survey by the Pew Research Center.

    People in 15 of 24 countries downgraded their ratings of the U.S., according to the survey of more than 28,000. In addition, majorities in almost every country surveyed describe Trump as “arrogant” and “dangerous.”

    https://www.npr.org/2025/06/12/nx-s1-5431366/us-allies-no-confidence-trump-poll

  9. The second Trump administration has done far more than withdraw from international agreements and organizations. The very nature of the new U.S. government—unaccountable, unlawful, opaque, corrupt, arbitrary, and erratic—makes it a poor partner for cooperation. It is difficult to imagine Washington returning to any kind of pre-Trump normal. Trump has not simply reduced the United States’ international commitments. He has hollowed out the country’s ability to play a significant and trusted role in the world. These effects will be extremely difficult to reverse because, unlike after Trump’s first term, there will be few experienced professionals to rebuild the institutions and relationships that make foreign policy work on a day-to-day basis.

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/imperial-president-home-emperor-abroad

  10. There is an increasing realization that if China made a move against Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping “would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rutte has previously branded Putin the Chinese president’s subordinate.

    Xi would tell the Kremlin leader that Russia needs to “keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory,” Rutte told The New York Times.

    “That is most likely the way this will progress.” he added.

    https://www.newsweek.com/nato-mark-rutte-china-taiwan-vladimir-putin-russia-2095125

  12. Following two impeachments (and two acquittals), an insurrection and another election, Trump is back in the White House and bent on revenge. “Donald Trump hates the CIA,” Weiner said, noting that Trump considers the agency the beating heart of a “deep state” that he believes is working to undermine him. Consequently, the president has appointed “a coterie of dangerously incompetent and servile acolytes to the highest positions of national security”. Weiner describes the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe – a former personal injury attorney, Maga congressman and, briefly, director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term – as “a spineless person who will do whatever Trump tells him to do”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/15/tim-weiner-cia-trump

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