By: Yehuda Gannon
For anyone following the news since the start of 2026, it is difficult to ignore the widespread developments occurring across the international arena. These changes, ranging from economic shocks caused by trade turmoil to regime shakeups in countries ruled by dictators for decades, have raised numerous discussions and concerns regarding the President’s domestic and foreign policy powers. However, these developments also touch on a new reality facing the post-World War II liberal international order. This order, characterized by an emphasis on shared norms and rules, cooperation, and free trade, has slowly been replaced with an order dominated by direct American economic and military action to address longstanding geopolitical challenges.
Before diving further into this new direction, it is critical to first understand the foundations of the current international order. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as one of two global superpowers and was in a unique position to mold the international order into its preferred image. Political scientist G. John Ikenberry’s article, Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of American Postwar Order, explores the creation of this postwar liberal international order, highlighting its formation and unique underpinnings that have allowed the order to thrive. Ikenberry argued that despite reaching its peak hegemonic power after World War II, the United States opted for the creation of an international system built in its liberal image, characterized by a limitation of hegemonic power. In particular, the United States had three options as it pertained to the postwar order in Europe and East Asia: domination, abandonment, or conversion. Ultimately, the United States chose conversion and a policy of “strategic restraint,” focusing on creating institutions premised on limited power and constitutional settlement, strikingly parallel to the theoretical underpinnings of the U.S. republic itself.
The fundamental aspect of this postwar structure is the composition of states that embrace the liberal features present in American hegemony. As Ikenberry notes, “[t]he United States wanted to create an order that conformed to its liberal democratic principles, but this could be done only if other governments embraced such a system as their own.” This postwar order was established through rebuilding and reshaping Europe (through the Marshall Plan) and Japan (through occupation and reconstruction), as well as the creation of new global institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations (UN).
This system, however, has created a large gap between countries that have embraced the liberal features of the international order and those that haven’t. A majority of countries are not considered “free” or are only “partly free” based on their protection of fundamental freedoms and rights. Additionally, powerful actors within these groups, such as China, have benefited from the system’s emphasis on free markets to advance their own agendas and to spread global influence and power. Herein lies the fundamental flaw of the system the United States created: when an international order is built with the baseline assumption that all actors will act in good faith, it creates a vacuum for those bad-faith actors to grow and expand their influence.
As the geopolitical stakes continue to rise, the global international order is reaching a point of crisis. Ikenberry himself, several years after the publication of his previous article, noted that the American global order is at a “turning-point.” Over the last year, however, the United States has arguably formally abandoned the system it once created. Three new features in particular have become paramount to U.S. foreign policy and America’s engagement with the international order: (1) the use of economic coercion to bind states to the United States’ will; (2) the use of military means to bend states hostile to the United States’ interests; and (3) the creation of alternative international institutions to resolve global conflicts.
Economic coercion is perhaps the most apparent tool utilized by President Trump to get states—friendly or adversarial—to comply with this new vision of the world order, causing turmoil within domestic and international markets while challenging the balance of power among America’s three branches of government. The Trump Administration has been using tariffs to achieve certain policy objectives, specifically in the context of foreign relations. At the beginning of Trump’s second term, Trump imposed tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China in order to receive certain concessions with respect to the flow of narcotics and immigrants into the United States. On April 2, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14257, titled Regulating Imports With a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices That Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits, increasing tariff rates on nearly every country. To counter foes, Trump has either threatened to use or actually used secondary tariffs, targeting countries such as India that continue to import sanctioned oil from Russia. While President Trump was recently handed a defeat by the Supreme Court of the United States against the imposition of tariffs through one particular statute (IEEPA), Trump has remained defiant, using alternative statutory means—such as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974—to implement tariffs and continue his economic agenda.
Simultaneously, the United States has also leveraged its military capabilities to achieve certain objectives, particularly against regimes long considered the most hostile, problematic, or adversarial to the United States. In the Western Hemisphere, President Trump authorized a military raid to capture President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Maduro was subsequently brought to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to face criminal charges. As a result of this capture, thousands of political prisoners were released, and the United States and Venezuela officially restored diplomatic ties. The changing dynamics in Venezuela, particularly the economic pressure against continuing the flow of oil to Havana, have also led to more focus and discussions on Cuba, which Trump has claimed will, too, “fall soon.”
And in the Middle East, where news is never quiet, the United States and Israel recently launched airstrikes against Iran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the longtime supreme leader and brutal dictator of Iran. Despite causing interruptions to global energy markets, Trump has made clear that, in the context of Iran, only unconditional surrender is acceptable and that he will have a direct role in picking Iran’s next leader. While the early tactical successes of the attack cannot be overlooked, the long-term resolution to a five-decade-long problem plaguing U.S. interests remains to be seen at this time.
Finally, the United States has undermined and discarded traditional international institutions in favor of more controlled and centralized parallel institutions. The most notable example of this shift can be found in the creation of the Board of Peace (BoP). The BoP, a new international body meant to implement the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza, was formally launched in January through U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803. Rather than take an advisory or supportive role, President Trump has taken a direct role as the Board’s Chairman, which grants him sweeping powers in managing the Board’s governance. So far, sixty countries have been invited to join the board, nearly one-third of all U.N. members. More importantly, Trump himself noted that the BoP could go beyond Gaza and address other global issues, potentially replacing or rivaling the U.N.
All of these developments, which at first do not appear to be related, fall within the greater context of the shifting dynamics of the international order and the geopolitical chess match between the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other. As the long-term outcome of U.S. actions across Latin America and the Middle East remains uncertain, and new developments continue to occur on a near-daily basis, we can only be certain of one thing: the principles underlying the international order of nearly the last century are slowly fading away in favor of a system dominated by direct American action.
