Rather than inaugurating an entirely new world order, Donald Trump seems to be reviving an ancient geopolitical paradigm: one in which force prevails over law, imposition over cooperation, and military power over diplomacy.

An approach that presents itself as ‘realist’ and ‘anti-establishment’, but which, in essence, recalls well-known historical scenarios – from 20th century imperialism to the age of colonial conquest – in which powerful states acted without qualms to extend their influence.

At the heart of this vision is the belief that the United States was born before man and must reclaim a leading role in the world, not just by defending its interests, but by imposing them. A logic of confrontation and supremacy rather than multilateral balancing.

Appetites over Greenland

An emblematic example is Greenland. The idea – repeatedly reiterated by Trump – that the United States can ‘acquire’ the Arctic island ‘by hook or by crook’, is not just a media provocation, but the plastic expression of a patrimonial conception of geopolitics: territories as transferable assets, states as subjects that can be pressurised to the point of surrender. In theory, a territorial acquisition would presuppose a process of dialogue, consensus, multilateral negotiation. In practice, in the context evoked by the Trump administration, it resembles much more a geopolitical extortion: either you accept the terms of the fittest, or you pay the consequences, including militarily.

This approach is not isolated, but is part of a broader framework in which the United States is no longer the guarantor of a rules-based international order, but the arbiter deciding who can trade with whom, who is legitimate and who is not.

Threats of tariffs or sanctions against countries that do not give in to pressure are a clear example: not a multilateral containment policy, but a unilateral imposition, often untied from coordination with historical allies, often themselves targets of the Trump administration’s pressure.

Opportunism on Russia and Ukraine

The paradox emerges forcefully if one looks at the attitude towards Russia.
On the one hand, Washington threatens economic retaliation against third states for their relations with Tehran, which is a historical ally of Moscow; on the other hand, the Trump administration shows an increasing willingness to enter into a privileged relationship with Vladimir Putin, despite the continuous bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine and the devastating human toll of the conflict.

The criterion is no longer compliance with shared norms, but immediate strategic utility. Friends and enemies are not moral or legal categories, but contingent variables.
Suffice it to recall how Trump throttled the Ukrainian president, taking away his satellite protection and violently attacking him in the Oval Office, before snatching up an ‘agreement’ on the exploitation of rare earths.
An agreement despite which the Ukrainian people still find themselves under the bombs of Putin, to whom Trump has rolled out and continues to roll out ideal carpets as long and red as his ties.

Another significant element is the ongoing denigration of allies, including NATO allies, whom Trump has repeatedly referred to as ‘lazy’ or ‘exploiters’ who are too timid in their financing.

This rhetoric forgets a fundamental political fact: the only time a NATO member state invokedArticle 5 – calling for the activation of the alliance’s solidarity – was immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when the US asked for and obtained the military, logistical and economic support of its partners to intervene in Afghanistan. That moment represented the most significant expression of collective solidarity in the history of the Atlantic Alliance, and today it risks being forgotten in the name of a confrontational approach.

Freedom reduced to a side effect

The combination of these elements – dabbling with allies and a desire for unilateral freedom of action – has generated growing concern in Europe.
Even the Western governments that are closest ideologically to the Trump administration on many issues often find themselves forced to justify or reinterpret difficult decisions, searching in the folds of the side effects for some positive element.

An emblematic example was the agreement on the release of citizens unjustly detained in the Maduro regime’s prisons: a positive result, yes, but achieved within a broader geopolitical project of occupation that does not always fit into a clear and shared framework of international law.
Most likely, if the autocrat Maduro had given Trump unrestricted access to Venezuela’s oil reserves he would have become one of his greatest friends, much to the peace of the Venezuelan people and our detained compatriots.

With Trump, in fact, the idea of ‘side effects’ is reversed: it is no longer the negative outcomes that arise in the shadow of a greater good, but rather the ‘few’ benefits that emerge in the context of questionable strategic aims.

The annihilation of international norms, the setting of dangerous precedents, and his self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela for the ‘good’ of the Venezuelan people – to whom, however, he imposes himself as supreme commander like the Emperor of Ethiopia’s Sabre of the Empire – are examples of how geopolitical goals can be pursued with a rhetoric that claims to justify them, despite weakening global institutions.

And so it will happen if, as seems increasingly likely, Trump uses force to overthrow the Iranian regime of the ayatollahs. In his design, the liberation of the Iranian people from the ayatollahs is only a side effect, a positive one as long as he is allowed to have his viceroy of Persia in place.
And patience if this viceroy should also suppress the protests in blood. Because someone who is ‘uncaring’ about freedoms and democracy at home is unlikely to care about the freedoms and democracy of others.

What comes after the death of international law

For the free world, however, the fall of the bloodthirsty regime manu militari will have been worth what it would in fact be: another mortal blow dealt to the system of international rules.
Which is fine and will always be fine as long as the targets are the real bad guys, but what will happen when the crosshairs are aimed at the real good guys who have become ‘bad’ because they are unwilling to give in to blackmail?
What to do when there is no longer a shred of global rule to invoke?

With this model of ‘expansionist isolationism’, an oxymoron that nevertheless captures a truth, the Trump administration, starting with slogans like America First – which seemed to promise a retreat from global affairs to focus on domestic interests – has ended up developing a foreign policy that does not distance the US from the world, but rather predatorily projects it at its centre.

The US, in this vision, does not retreat to focus on itself, but isolates itself to have its hands free on the rest of the planet, unencumbered by treaties or established alliances. From America First to America Fist.

This approach, it must be said, does not come out of nowhere.
Trump intercepts a real sentiment: the weariness of a part of American public opinion towards multilateralism, perceived as costly and inefficient; alongside the conviction that the United States has ‘paid too much’ to guarantee a global order from which others have benefited.
In this sense, its foreign policy is not an anomaly, but a radicalisation of tendencies that were already present.

The objective fact, however, is that the response to this frustration is through a return to a logic of power that history had already largely questioned, not to mention that a large part of his electoral base expected the isolationism tout court promised in the campaign and does not view the President’s excessive interventionism positively.

The systemic risk is obvious: when force becomes the main language of international relations, international law becomes empty, multilateral institutions lose legitimacy and medium or small states are forced to choose between submission and rearmament.
This is the classic dynamic that preceded the great rifts of the 20th century, when the progressive dismantling of common rules opened the way for aggressive policies masquerading as legitimate national interests.

It is not, therefore, a question of demonising Trump or reducing his administration to an ideological caricature.
His vision has an internal coherence and answers a real political question.
But precisely for this reason it deserves to be analysed without discount: what is presented as a ‘new paradigm’ is in reality the re-proposition of a more unstable, more conflictual and, in the long run, more dangerous world.

A return to the past

It is a world that recalls historical scenarios in which great powers acted with impunity, forcing agreements or imposing their will. The challenge is not only for the United States or its historical partners: it is for the entire international system, which is in danger of being rewritten not through consensus, but through power.

The question therefore remains open and concerns not only the United States, but the global system as a whole: how long can an international order hold if its leading power decides to replace dialogue with pressure and cooperation with threat?
History suggests that the answer, sooner or later, comes. And it is rarely painless.