How the Trump Administration reshaped the liberal world order.
The neorealist foreign policy agenda of the Trump administration is framed through the paradigm of black boxes. This approach overlooks a state’s internal domestic challenges, concentrating instead on the amount of power a nation holds during a specific period. It specifically aims to pinpoint the state’s vulnerabilities and strategically exploit them in a zero-sum game.
NATO relies heavily on the U.S. military, which provides between 44% to 62% of the alliance’s total defense capabilities. Consequently, the current dependence of NATO nations has weakened European states to other hegemons such as the United States, China, and the USSR. While the U.S.’s reluctance to provide military guarantees to support NATO, regardless of a large percentage of Americans’ support for NATO funding at the advent of Ukraine by Russia, has exposed the inherent weakness in the international world order, and exposed a current black box scenario within the European alliances, which have kept peace in Europe since the conclusion of World War II.
The U.S. hesitancy to offer military guarantees to NATO has consequently undermined the stability of the liberal world order. This has initiated a domino effect, leading to increased anarchy among international players, diminishing the strength of the security alliance, and giving rise to a platform for autocratic figures like Trump to shape a new world order centered around authoritarian regimes.
Trump’s new world order was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20, 2026. It was formulated around the premise of providing economic development for war-torn states struggling to rebuild internally, with the intent of extracting resources from conflict zones to benefit wealthy donors. Days after, he launched the Board of Peace on January 22.
The first action of Trump’s new world order was the formation of the Board of Peace, controlled by autocratic heads of state, to implement kleptocratic policies that benefit oligarch donors. The new Board of Peace has seized the opportunity to exploit the internal vulnerabilities of Middle Eastern states by implementing economic development plans to rebuild Gaza and generate profits for board members willing to pay $1 billion to secure a permanent seat on the board for perpetuity.
Speed up, the Administration America’s Counter-Cartel Coalition (A3C) on March 5, 2026, a week from the day an offensive against Iran was enacted. A3C is described as a coalition of military leaders from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, designed to “aggressively and urgently confront threats to our homeland and hemisphere.”
Trump’s new world order is a framework centered on the extraction of natural resources by using coercion tactics against foes and allies, all the while using taxpayers’ dollars for profit maximization for the Trump empire and friends. This form of foreign policy approach is vastly different from the liberal worldview of diplomacy, which is a soft-power approach and is supported by many Americans who have grown to support institutional liberalism.
Instead, Americans are forced to see a foreign policy platform structured in kleptocracy and highlights the U.S President’s perpetual affliction with using democratic institutions to conduct personal business practices. President Trump’s appointment of himself as chairman of the Board of Peace is a construct for profit maximization, designed around the use of international conflicts, leveraging the power of the U.S. military, utilizing the principles of international anarchy within the world order, and the strength of the U.S economy to generate income to enrich the President, family, and friends.
These actions have eroded historical practices established over decades of American belief in liberal institutions and the use of political diplomacy to resolve conflicts have been replaced with the use of coercion to replace established diplomatic channels.
These actions have seen the Trump administration disregard all international laws, norms, and processes established by the liberal world order implemented by the United Nations. Such actions have led to an increase in anarchic-authoritarian governance on the international stage, disrupting liberal institutions, creating anarchy, and restructuring the multipolarity of the world hegemonic order, bringing it closer to the brink of a protracted global conflict.
