(Bruce Jones – Brookings) Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has taken a meat cleaver to several elements of the multilateral order (which sometimes goes by the ill-conceived phrase “rules-based order”). The imposition of sweeping, disorganized, ill-structured tariffs threw the World Trade Organization-based trading regime into question. The 2025 National Security Strategy makes sweeping arguments about American intent to enforce security and resource arrangements to its benefit within the Western Hemisphere, undermining the most essential point of the U.N., namely the prohibition against the acquisition of territory by force. And as the administration promised to withdraw from multiple international institutions, governments around the world waited in nervous anticipation of another shock to the system.
Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ and the multilateral order | Brookings
