The president of the United States recently shared this photoshopped image on social media, showing NATO leaders a map where the US has taken control of Venezuela, but more shockingly, territory from loyal NATO allies that helped the US fight several wars in the past decades: Denmark and Canada.

To many, this seems like something only a madman would do. But, according to a viral speech by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, this is all part of a bigger trend. This is a return to

“””an era of great power rivalry rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must“””

And, while Carney has a completely different vision on how to behave in such a new world order, THE OVERALL IDEA —that we are moving back to an era of great power competition—

is actually in line with what one of the architects of Trump’s foreign policy, Stephen Miller recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper:

“””we live in a world—the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.“””

Therefore, it makes sense that Trump’s new national security strategy LITERALLY says they are returning to the so-called Monroe Doctrine,

under which the US has historically sought to keep other great powers out of the Western Hemisphere. This means that according to Miller, the US will now be

“””using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.“””

And, that’s exactly what we have seen in the last few weeks! Therefore, some like dr. Wess Mitchell have said that Trump’s actions “are in fact rooted in a clear and compelling logic grounded in the discipline of grand strategy.

So, what is this logic? One word: consolidation. Venezuela, Greenland, Canada, the US is acting like a GREAT POWER that is consolidating its power in it’s own Hemisphere to recover its strength, which will allow it to ultimately compete with other Great powers like Russia and China in the new era of great power competition.

However, according to the authors of a recent viral international relations paper, professors Stacey Goddard, and Abraham Newman, this explanation does NOT make sense because actually, upon closer inspection Russia’s and China’s activities in Venezuela and around Greenland are extremely limited. On top of that, their resources are way too expensive to truly benefit the US. Therefore, they argue that to truly understand Trump’s attacks on neighbors and Allies, we need to view the new international order through the lens of what came BEFORE the era of great power competition, the era of competing royal houses, that cared about personal wealth and status.

To see how that works Goddard and Newman

“””always give the example of Game of Thrones - this show about a small group of elites who really don’t care about their societies in general. They just care about redistributing resources amongst these houses. And that is a system that for most of human history, dominated international relations.“””

So, could it be that if we view Trump as a Neo-Royalist, and the refinery and mineral mining owning billionaires around him as his court, Venezuela, Greeland, and also strangely high tariffs against China’s biggest rival India, it will all fall into place.

So, who is right? Is the new world order we are seeing right now a Trump vs. Carney style return to great power politics or rather the return of the corrupt politics of royal dynasties?

To find out, I did on the one hand, a massive deep dive into the fundaments and the history of great power politics and how it compares to Trump’s new national security strategy versus Carney’s speech, and, on the other hand, an in-depth interview with professor Goddard and Newman.

But, before we get into the which story can explain the new world order best, we need to understand what we are leaving behind, that is

Ch1 The rise & fall of the rules based (liberal) international order

Newfoundland, Canada, 1941. Churchill arguably still the leader of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, meets his counterpart from the richest nation on earth: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Together they sit down to discuss what they see as the ideal international order, an order that would never again produce another World War.

They have just agreed on the first pillar of the Rules based international order

  1. have borders that should be kept as they are
  2. have a right to SELF-govern
  3. have a right to trade freely and for whom
  4. the seas should be kept open to facilitate this international trade.

The second pillar of the liberal rules based order was economic.

Bretton Woods, The United States, 1944, 44 nations come together to put an end to the economic chaos of the 1930s and 40s. This conference sets the stage for the following international institutions that will create order, where before there was chaos.

  1. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would later turn into the world trade organization: tariffs.) should be the same for everyone
  2. The world bank: all poor countries should get loans to develop, independent of their political allegiance to certain nations
  3. The IMF: getting loans to save your currency from collapsing will now depend on your economic program, rather than your political allegiance to certain nations.

Finally, the third pillar of the rules based order was the UN, a community of states both strong and weak that all pledged to follow even more rules.

1944 Dumberton Oaks, the United States, 1945 Yalta, The Soviet Union, and finally, 1945 San Francisco, these conferences led the creation of the United Nations. Countries that signed the UN charter agreed that they would respect

  1. human rights
  2. international law
  3. that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest,
  4. and that the goal of this new international order was to promote the economic and social advancement of all peoples

And, just as with Bretton Woods, this led to the creation of some international institutions which theoretically made is more difficult for states to act on their own in key areas like

  1. WAR which was only allowed if the UN authorizes it, and
  2. JUSTICE: states were held accountable by the international court of justice.

On top of that, some states went even further by signing up to the international criminal court, which could and did sue leaders from weaker states like Sudan, and the Congo. But, crucially, as Carney admitted

“””We knew the story of the international rules based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.“””

For example, the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants against Putin and Netanyahu. But, they are practically untouchable. The IMF was far stricter enforcing painful economic reforms on small powers it lent to like Egypt, Greece and Argentina than against strong countries like the UK. The UN sanctioned small powers like Zimbabe and North Korea for human right abuses, but never strong countries like China, the Soviet Union and US for similar offenses, and despite countries signing up to not invade others except for self-defense, both Western and Eastern powers invaded several countries during the so-called liberal rules based order.

Still, while we cannot be 100% sure this was because of the rules based order and international institutions, in hindsight, the liberal international order looked like a big success. There were no new world wars and even without taking those into account, the years from 1945 - 2011 had relatively fewer conflicts between states than the decades before them.

We can also see that in the liberal order relations between countries, on average, got much friendlier. We even saw several countries joining a security community. And, on the flip side we saw far less countries being in a severe or lesser rivalry, like France, Germany, and the UK, which used to constantly be at each others throats.

Finally, on the economics side, after a massive reduction in global tariffs, we saw an explosion in global trade. And, more importantly, we saw a massive reduction in global poverty.

And, yet while free trade under the rules based international order arguably helped drag millions out of poverty, especially in Asia, the bottom 50% of Americans saw their share of income drop remarkably in the second half of the order.

So, it is perhaps no wonder that Americans elected a candidate twice that talked openly about blowing up the liberal order. But, we have to honest, it was not just Trump that started this process, the three great powers seem to be in on it together.

First, in 2014, member of the UN permanent security council Russia annexed Crimea, and then in 2022 several other provinces from Ukraine. Next, when it come to the economic pillar, Trump’s 2018 tariff barrage already completely undermined its principal of low tariffs that should be equal against all nations. Meanwhile, China actively undermined the IMF and World bank when it became a bigger lender to poor and crisis stricken countries than the IMF and World Bank combined. Finally, both China and Russia already had a terrible human rights record, and, honestly the US lost a lot of credibility in 2003 under Bush and Cheney when they essentially authorized the use of torture in CIA black sites and in Guantanamo bay.

Still, Trump now almost announcing new tariffs against a new nation every month, and threatening to annex territories from its most loyal allies, that genuinely looks like the final nail in the coffin of the rules based international order.

So, no wonder that Carney said that

“””We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.“””

The liberal rules based international order is dead. About that almost everyone agrees. The real question is, what’s next? Are we heading back an era of great power competition like Carney and the Trump administration seem to believe, or should we think back further, are Trump’s chaotic actions better understood through the lens of the emergence of new kings and courts of billionaire backers such as the Trump dynasty, the House of Putin, and house of Modi.

Ch2 what will the new global order actually look like (Royalism, Great Power Competition, Rules Based Order)

The first view is that we are now heading back to a new era of great power competition, where great power leaders like Trump have a very different vision than middle power leaders like Carney. This means the world will look a lot more like it did in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century. International relations scholars tend to refer to this order as the Westphalian global order, after the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which greatly reduced the power of royal houses in favor of nation states and their bureaucracies.

In this New-Westphalian order, international institutions like the UN, IMF and World Trade Organization lose what’s left of their waning power. Instead, the world will once again be completely determined by the actions of great powers like the US, China, Russia, and perhaps India and Europe.

According to International Relations professor John Mearshimer, who famously belongs to a school of thought known as ‘realism’ in such a world order:

“””states can never be certain that they won’t end up living next door to a really powerful state that has malign intentions, All of that causes states to do everything they can to be as powerful as possible.“””

Depending on how powerful they end up being, states are then classified as great powers, middle powers, or small powers. They will all play a different variation of the power game. First, small powers will either try to survive by claiming neutrality, like Sweden and Belgium did in the second world war, or by aligning themselves with a great power for protection, like Finland and Hungary did. Meanwhile middle powers will either try to play great powers off against one another, like India has historically done, or they will the same policy Carney suggested in his speech

“””value based realism “””

, meaning that liberal countries like Canada and Finland, for every geopolitical situation weigh their liberal values —such as the importance of human rights, respecting boundaries, and democracy— with geopolitical REALITY. Especially for Canada, this is a break with the past. Concretely, whereas Canada’s previous prime minister Justin Trudeau frequently challenged great powers like China on their human rights record, Carney is subtly indicating that Canada may no longer do this, IF the geopolitical reality is that this would get Canada into trouble with a great power. However, simultaneously, Carney indicates that the way forward may be for liberal, value based middle powers to form coalitions with countries with similar values, that may help them stand up to great powers WITH DIFFERENT VALUES like Trump’s United States.

You see, while the Trump team also write in their national security strategy they believe in REALISM now, they give version of it a different name: flexible realism. Which, so far seems to mean, might is right. A strong country like the US can take Greenland from Denmark because

“””DENMARK IS A TINY COUNTRY WITH A TINY ECONOMY AT A TINY MILITARY. THEY CANNOT DEFEND GREENLAND“””

This is what international scholars mean when they say might is right. The US should get Greenland because it is strong enough to defend Greenland from other great powers.

But, why does a great power like the US need to do this. Aren’t they already powerful enough? No, say scholar like Mearsheimer. Without international commitment to respecting boundaries, even great powers like the US, Russia or China will always fear that another great power will become much stronger than them, upsetting the balance of power. Therefore they may even want to

“””dominate your region of the world, is because in that situation, there is no other state that is capable of hurting you“””

This logic leads to so-called Spheres of influence, where great powers try to deny other great powers the ability to threaten them by keeping them as far away as possible. In the 19th and 20th century the US tried to keep other great powers out of the America’s under the so-called Monroe doctrine. Using similar logic, Hitler at some points actually proposed a sphere of influence in Europe which he called the German-Monroe doctrine. And, people like professor Mearsheimer have used to logic of the Monroe doctrine to make the case that the West provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, by meddling in its sphere of influence.

The Trump team has written in their national security strategy that they are essentially returning to the Monroe doctrine. Some like dr. Wess Mitchell have used this type of logic to argue that “Trump’s strategic actions are in fact rooted in a clear and compelling logic firmly grounded in the discipline of grand strategy. ” He says that Russia and China ARE the US’s natural great power competitors but that the US no longer has the strength to fight them all over the world. Therefore, the US is now essentially retreating to it’s own (Western) Hemisphere, just as it has done historically many times before. Venezuela and Greenland are both about securing access to vital resources, and, crucially about denying them to China and Russia.

So, what we have seen so far is simply the RETURN of great power competition. Everything the US has done so far, is just in the national interest. Flexible realism is a cynical but not illogical take on America First. However, to me, there were at least 3 details about recent events that I could not explain with this theory.

First, capturing Maduro does NOT seem to have been in the US national interest, given that the oil there is too expensive to get out of the ground and China did not get that much anyway. Second, annexing Greenland and —in the process completely freaking out European allies— does not make much sense either, given that the US already had almost unlimited military access to the island and easy economic access to its minerals. Finally, if Trump was truly following a great power style strategy, why did he recently tariff the hell out of India, which is China’s natural rival in Asia?

This is where Goddard’s and Newman’s neo-royalist theory starts making a lot of sense. They claim that what we are seeing today is

“””Stacie Goddard (02:49.847) rather than a system of territorial nation states, rather than a system of rule governed institutions, what we see is a system of international politics that’s structured around the interest of ruling cliques, which include a personalist absolute sovereign and basically his network of whether or not his family, whether or not it’s financial interests, ideologues that legitimate his rule.“””

They call this neo-royalism because rather than a return to the great power politics of the Westphalian order, it would potentially be more like a return to the world order before the peace of Westphalia in 1648.

You see, the peace of Westphalia came about to put an end to the various devastating wars that plagued the Holy Roman empire. Wars that often came about because of royal succession NOT the national interest. For example, the Dutch war of independence against Spain came about after the Dutch suddenly found themselves with a new Spanish king that had essentially inherited the Netherlands though a series of marriages.

So, in the royalist system, the main actors were not states, but rather ruling monarchs and their cliques. Therefore, most wars in those days were NOT about the national interest. They were about increasing royal wealth and status.

Similarly, Goddard and Newman argue that in the case of Maduro’s capture, Greenland, and tariffs against India

“””it’s not about national interests. It’s about this small group of hyper elites, this clique actor kind of clusters interests. And so that really drives a very different logic of how international politics functions.“””

So, while Venezuela’s oil is too expensive to benefit the American oil industry as a whole, the specific American refineries that DID benefit just so happened to be controlled by Trump mega doners such as John Addison from Vitol. Similarly, while Greenland’s minerals are not worth enough for the US to alienate Allies over, that price may very well be worth it to billionaire with extensive interests in Greenland, Ronald Lauder, who reportedly put the idea into Trump’s head in 2018.

Finally, there’s Trump’s mega tariffs against India. Again, from a great power perspective, it makes NO sense to alienate China’s biggest Asian rival. But, if you consider that Modi very publicly humiliated Trump by stating that he had nothing to do with Pakistani, Indian peace, Indian tariffs immediately after that incident start making a lot more sense.

But, while neo-royalism can fill in a lot of gaps, in their article Goddard and Newman do recognize that royalist dynamics have always been there in the background. After all, even during the height of great power politics, the 19th century, Belgian king Leopold used the Belgian state to conquer and dominate his own personal colony in the Congo.

And, even today, Trump style personalist rule is quite common. However,

“””Abe (29:21.884) the difference between MBS or Orban and Trump is that they just don’t have the the material or status capability to transform the international system. And that’s why Trump is so exceptional, because he has the US military and the US economy behind it.“””

In other words, just as Westphalian style great power politics were always still there in the background, during for example the Cold War, Goddard and Newman argue that Royalist elements ARE and have always been a part of the international order as well.

Therefore, my

conclusion

is that to truly make sense of where the global order is going, we will need all three lenses.

If Carney can make international organizations become more powerful again, the global order will again become more predictable. But, if they become weaker, we will either see more great power games, where small and medium powers like Ukraine, Venezuela, and perhaps even Canada become pawns or battlefields for great powers that continuously seek to become more and more powerful because they fear that —if they won’t— they will NOT remain a GREAT power for long.

However, if great powers are are governed by autocratic or illiberal rulers, then we will increasingly see incidents —like Trumps board of peace which he plans to stay on even if he is no longer US president— where great power INFLUENCE WILL NOT be used in the NATIONAL, but rather to enrich personalist leaders and their cliques or elevate their social standing amongst a new class of global elites, that compete much like the royal houses of Game of Thrones for power and status.

So, given that Trump will be in power for at least 3 more years, and given that far right populist parties are still lurking in the shadows in many other middle powers as well, I think it is a safe bet that we WILL be seeing a more volatile international order emerging, in which, whether it be for personal or national interest, tariffs, sanctions and even military strikes and wars WILL become more common.

Sadly, the economic evidence so far tells us that, on average, this will make us all poorer and less secure, especially given that, unlike in the 19th century, great powers now have weapons that could kill is all at the click of a button.

Still, it doesn’t have to be that way. For example, some have argued that at the congress of Vienna, after Napoleon was defeated, the return of royalism looked inevitable… yet this never happened. Similarly, who knows, perhaps Trump’s successor WILL see the value of the liberal rules based internal order again, and together with Canada and others, they may build yet another liberal international order, from the ashes of the one we just said goodbye to.

So, what do you think? Let me know in the comments,

and if you want to know more I highly recommend you check out 3 follow-up analyses from our advertising sponsor The Economist.

Specifically, I recommend you check out this detailed analysis about while Trump may have backed down about Greenland, it’s only the tip of the iceberg of Europe’s geopolitical vulnerabilities. Indeed, why is it that in the new world order everybody seems to be picking on Europe specifically, the Economist answer that question as well. Finally, check out The Economist’s take on whether Mark Carney can actually help Canada find it’s place in the new world order.

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