Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
During his first week in office, US President Trump took aim at the norms and institutions of the post-Cold War order, from global management of climate and health to international trade rules. For a decade or more, big players – including Washington – have edged away from the global governance ambitions set in the more internationalist 1990s. Trump’s actions therefore portend a permanent shift in the landscape – not just a switch that flips back in four years’ time.
Although the pullout from the Paris Climate Accords was expected, many observers were more surprised by Trump pulling the US out of the World Health Organization, and out of negotiations on a pandemic treaty intended to prevent another global crisis on the scale of COVID-19.
Another executive order re-opened the possibility of sanctions on the International Criminal Court and its key personnel, and Republicans are already attempting to move legislation to that effect through Congress.
Trump has also teed up a range of possible trade actions that would move the US further away from extant WTO rules, including across-the-board tariffs and ending US free trade with China. A short-lived back-and-forth with Colombia over its refusal to accept planeloads of deportees offered a glimpse of the new administration’s playbook: the matter was quickly resolved after Trump threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs.
Not just the institutions but the norms of the post-Cold War order are under threat. A series of executive orders will effectively end US participation in global efforts to combat racial and gender prejudice and inequity, with programmes being disestablished and staff reassigned. A freeze on almost all US foreign aid – ‘pending review’ – has left in doubt the fates of US development and humanitarian assistance programmes and aid groups.
Meanwhile, the administration’s moves to turn back or deport migrants without allowing them to make asylum claims shines stark light on the growing gap between migration policy as now practiced globally and the international norms laid down in past decades.
So far, Trump and his Cabinet have focused less on the pillars of the post-1945 world order – NATO, the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the UN, the World Bank and the IMF. The question remains whether Trump and those around him are willing to operate within these institutions or will target them next.
Trump’s team – including his Secretary of State Marco Rubio – have softened or reversed earlier rhetoric suggesting that the US might quit NATO or Asian defence partnerships, as well as on Ukraine and nuclear weapons. The administration’s timeline for a Ukraine peace deal has moved from the first 24 hours to the first 100 days. While Trump’s Project 2025 urged the Pentagon to prepare for the resumption of US nuclear testing, Trump surprised many by using his video remarks at Davos to call for US–Russia–China talks aimed at reducing nuclear arsenals.
Several commentators have argued that the actions taken so far do not add up to a radical agenda, or to an irreversible break with Washington’s traditional leadership of the global order. But many of the aspects of global governance that are seen in the US as secondary – or culture war fodder – are now fundamental elsewhere. Whether or not climate, trade and health count as national security issues in the US, they are matters of high policy in many parts of the world.
Global skepticism towards US commitment to a rules-based order and charges of hypocrisyare not new; the Gaza war is the most recent but far from the only example. But the Trump team explicitly and repeatedly rejects the post-Cold War assumption that there is a net benefit to the United States from consistent global rules.
The global landscape is also different now. Unlike in 2017, there are a host of state and non-state actors eager to take advantage of the US withdrawal from global norms and institutions. US actions offer permission, and even support, to other leaders looking to edge away from onerous financial commitments and policy restrictions – and the surge of illiberal populism has installed more such leaders.
In recent years, US support for international institutions has often been justified with the argument that, in Washington’s absence, Beijing would step in and turn the international order to its benefit. Trump’s administration is split between China hawks and would-be China dealmakers. But unlike the Biden administration and its more traditional Republican counterparts, neither faction sees international institutions as a key arena for competition.
To save the ambitions of post-Cold War global governance, strengthened recommitment will be required: from wealthy governments that can help pick up some of the slack, but also from business and philanthropy, and from emerging economies ready to remake global governance in their favour. During Trump’s first term, US cities and states as well as the private sector stepped up on climate policy, while philanthropy and other wealthy countries beefed up humanitarian and human rights support. 50 countries joined an ‘Alliance for Multilateralism’, launched by Germany and France.
It will not be as easy to fill the gaps this time. Governments elsewhere are also cutting back in the human rights and humanitarian space, and trimming their climate ambitions. Conservative activists have targeted climate investors and corporate climate targets, and threatened activist cities , states and private donors who focus on climate and rights.
This suggests that the parts of the international order that manage to survive Trump will require at least the complaisance if not the active support of Beijing. Which, in turn, means that the order that emerges will look different than it does today.
But Beijing is no straightforward saviour. While it has amped up its presence in many international institutions, China has avoided contributing proportionate to its standing as the world’s second-largest economy. For example, China is not even among the top 10 WHO donors, which include both governments and philanthropies. And at the WTO, China still wants to be treated as a developing economy on a par with the world’s poorest nations. Moving away from those positions will require major change – and major funding at a time when China’s economy is wobbly and a tariff war with Washington looms.
Beijing will certainly reap public affairs benefits at Washington’s expense, by presenting itself as a reliable, low-drama partner on trade and assistance and as a supporter of existing international organizations. But it is unlikely to step up to fill the funding and programmatic gaps – much less the gaping holes in global norms.
Supporters of global governance around the world are understandably worried, not least because of the challenges Trump’s approach poses to their own governments. But the question of what parts of the post-Cold War order can be saved – and for whom – will have to be tackled soon. This time, there is no turning back.
