The Makings of a Prewar World
· The Atlantic
Donald Trump offered perhaps the clearest summation yet of his worldview in an otherwise discursive address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. Defending the American takeover of Venezuelan oil, he invoked an old maxim: “To the victor belongs the spoils.” He then presented Iran with a choice between accepting his terms and being driven “into hell with no chance of survival.”
These remarks are the latest sign that world politics is entering an era when might makes right. Yet Trump is only one of the leaders driving this rupture from the post–World War II international order. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have also broken the order, although their methods differ profoundly—morally, legally, and otherwise. American policy may change when Trump leaves office in January 2029, but Putin and Xi may remain in power well into the next decade.
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A new American president will likely not be able to restore the old order or create a better one, even if they want to. Their greatest challenge will be to arrest the slide.
International order is a notoriously vague and politically contested concept. Many leaders in the global South, along with Western critics, reject the idea that the United States ever consistently abided by a rules-based system. They point to Western military interventions, double standards, and the unequal distribution of power within international institutions. But the old order’s failures do not mean that its restraints were meaningless.
In his first book, A World Restored, Henry Kissinger argued that a stable and legitimate order rests on a limited consensus: an understanding among the major powers about what he called the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. Governments can compete intensely and violate rules without seeking to overturn the system itself. The danger arises when a major power becomes so dissatisfied with the limits imposed upon it that it adopts a revolutionary foreign policy.
[Vivian Salama: America’s allies are no longer waiting for Trump to leave]
Under the old international order, major powers did not, as a general rule, conquer and annex the territory of their neighbors. The global trading system was based on reciprocity, tariffs were historically low, and markets were relatively open. And, although it was the world’s strongest country, the United States exercised enough self-discipline to allow its allies to grow into genuine partners, not vassals to be constantly squeezed for concessions.
Over the past decade, and decisively since the pandemic, that consensus about permissible conduct has collapsed. Putin launched the largest war in Europe since World War II with his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He more than anyone has revived the idea that countries can expand their borders through the use of force. Combined Russian- and Ukrainian-military casualties (those killed, wounded, and missing) have reached approximately 2 million people. European governments have accused Russia of an expanding campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks, arson, and drone incursions below the threshold of conventional war. North Korea has intervened directly in this war, and many other nations are indirectly involved—China and Iran on the side of Russia; Europe, the United States (at least under Joe Biden), and Asian democracies on the side of Ukraine.
Under Xi, China has broken the global trading system. Xi has used the power of the Chinese state to establish dominance in advanced manufacturing, reduce China’s imports as much as possible, and aggressively grow its exports. The result is that China has enormous excess capacity. Its goods flood into the rest of the world at prices impossible to compete with, leaving other countries to choose between deindustrialization and protectionism. More and more of them are selecting the latter. This policy is not as morally egregious as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but it has toppled a key pillar of the international economic order.
Since taking office for a second term, in 2025, Trump has turned American power against U.S. allies and partners. He imposed the highest tariffs in nearly a century on Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, and the European Union and used the threat of more to extract hundreds of billions of dollars in investment pledges. He mused about making Canada the 51st state and seizing Greenland. He pushed Ukraine to sign over a share of its mineral wealth in the middle of a war for its national survival. Under Trump, the United States sees itself not as the guarantor of an alliance system of like-minded democracies, but as a dominant power that wields its influence for singular, transactional gain.
Trump has broken the restraint that made American primacy tolerable to most of the rest of the world. Reports suggest that he may meet Xi and Putin for a “big three” trilateral on the margins of the Asia Pacific Economic Summit in Shenzhen in November, which could mark the formal end of the old order.
The rupture has produced an international environment that feels ever more like that of a prewar period. This does not mean that a major conflict is inevitable. But if one occurs, future historians will not find its causes sudden or mysterious. They are in plain sight.
[Listen: Trump battles against an economy of his making]
The major powers are building up their militaries and racing to master drone warfare and artificial intelligence. Trump’s lack of commitment to alliances, especially in Europe, raises the prospect that an aggressor may calculate that it can act without triggering much of a U.S. reaction. Meanwhile, America’s rivals are more and more aligned as they integrate their military production, share sensitive technology, and assist one another in battle.
The shift has generational and psychological drivers. Putin, Xi, and Trump are elderly, sometimes erratic, insulated in information bubbles, and animated by ideological visions of national revival. The moment may feel like a closing window—a now-or-never opportunity to remake the world while they still can.
A future American president may promise to build a new and improved international order. But Xi and Putin will have little reason to accept the restraints that Washington wants to restore, and although American allies may welcome a return to a more internationalist U.S. foreign policy, they will harbor doubts that it will survive the next election.
Rather than promising what they cannot deliver, aspiring presidents should level with the American people. The international order has come to an end. The next president will inherit one of the most unforgiving international environments since 1945. Their task will be to stop the deterioration, inject some stability into world affairs, and begin to lay the foundation for a better future, even if that is not achievable in the short term.