Prof Thomas Biersteker
Gasteyger Professor Honoraire, Geneva Graduate Institute

Synopsis : With Donald Trump returning to the White House, multilateralism and the rules-based international order may be replaced by illiberal nationalism, regional governance, and alternative global leadership dynamics.

Keywords: Donald Trump; Multilateralism; Rules-Based Order; Illiberal Nationalism; Institutional Resilience; World Response; Rise of China.

Introduction

Eight years ago, I participated in a post-election panel discussion, following Donald Trump’s first election to the US Presidency. It was convened by the International Press Club in Geneva and the Director-General of the UN Office in Geneva was included on the panel. One of the first questions we were asked was what we thought were the greatest challenges facing the then relatively new UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

I responded, “his relationship with the incoming US president.” I made a reference to James Traub’s book on Kofi Annan’s troubled relationship with George W. Bush, titled Paved with Good Intentions. Here we are again, eight years later, with Donald Trump about to return to the White House, but I’m afraid we cannot apply Traub’s title to the present moment, because there are few, if any, good intentions on the Trump side.

Multilateralism and multilateral institutions

Mr. Trump dislikes multilateralism and prefers unilateral action and bilateral relations to the messiness and uncertainty of multilateralism. Multilateralism takes time, often involves compromises of narrow self-interests, and requires subsidies from wealthier and more powerful states to underwrite the costs of multilateral arrangements. None of these aspects – patience, compromise, or the underwriting of costs – are consistent with the “America first” policies articulated during Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency or with the thinking of many of his recent cabinet appointees.

The last time Trump was in office, his administration withdrew from UN organizations, including the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, UNRWA, and the WHO. His administration withdrew funding from the World Health Organization during the COVID pandemic, weakened the security guarantees associated with NATO (arguments he frequently revisited in his recent campaign), and undercut the effectiveness of the WTO, dismantling its dispute settlement system by blocking the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body. We can anticipate volatility in US foreign policy and international relations going forward, along with renewed skepticism about the utility of multilateralism.

The rules-based international order

We are likely to see a further erosion of the rules-based international order that was constructed by, and has been associated with, the US since the end of the second World War. The US had already self-abandoned much of the rules-based order during the first Trump administration, by undercutting the World Trade Organization and periodically withdrawing from other treaty agreements. Trump abruptly withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) intended to place restraints on the potential weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program in 2018, a successful product of intensive and patient multilateral negotiations. The JCPOA offered sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable controls on Iran’s nuclear program. The program was working at the time of the US withdrawal, and according to the IAEA, Iran was fully compliant with the inspection regime and the restrictions on the potential weaponization of its nuclear program. Trump declared his ability and intent to replace the multilateral agreement with something better, but like his approach to domestic policies like replacing Obamacare, Trump lacked strategic focus and never negotiated another agreement. All he came up with was “maximum pressure” sanctions that prompted Iran to defect from compliance with its side of the agreement.

One of the virtues of the first Trump Presidency was his occasional willingness to defy the conventional wisdom of his advisers and do something at radical variance with the prevailing consensus within the US foreign policy establishment. His opening to Kim Jong-un and the swift transition from threats of “fire and fury” in 2017 to a so-called “bromance” in 2018 between Trump and a leader who was actively challenging many global norms, particularly with regard to the acquisition of nuclear weapons, was a radical and potentially promising move. There were a few, important achievements at the Singapore summit in 2018, including a joint agreement to the eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. It was a fleeting achievement, however. It was undercut in part by the machinations of his own National Security Adviser at the time (John Bolton), but more importantly by the absence of a longer-term strategy and the willingness, patience, focus, and concentration to follow up effectively on the initial breakthroughs.

While the Biden administration reversed the tone of the rhetoric associated with the first Trump administration, it did not depart significantly from the core substance of many of the policies it inherited from its predecessor, from tariffs on China to the maintenance of broad sanctions on Cuba, Iran, and the DPRK, however unproductive they were in terms of stated policy goals. It appears that the US has abandoned the role of providing leadership for the world (which it historically offered, whether the world wanted US leadership, or not). The Trump administration was unpredictable, erratic, and not very strategic in abandoning its traditional role in global leadership during its first term, but many of the core policies of the first Trump administration were continued by its successor and will likely be intensified in his second term.

What do we know to date about the second Trump administration?

The appointments of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Michael Waltz as National Security Adviser suggest an adversarial approach to China, rather than a cooperative one, when it comes to addressing global challenges that cannot be solved by any country on its own, like climate change. Jamieson Greer, Chief of Staff for Trump’s former US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, has been offered the senior trade position in the new administration. His former boss frequently clashed with the World Trade Organization, calling it a “mess” that had “failed America.”

During the campaign, Trump declared that he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Although Trump tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Report, he has drawn many of his senior advisers from the ranks of its authors.

They articulate a strategy to ensure that Trump will not be restrained by more moderate forces during his second term in office. Its chapter on the State Department argues that all State Department leadership positions should be replaced on 20 January, including all US ambassadors, not just political appointees. It also calls for ending all efforts to implement unratified treaties and the practice of enforcing treaties not ratified by Congress, which includes many human rights and arms control agreements. It states that they should be thoroughly reviewed and “most likely jettisoned.” When it comes to human rights, the focus should be on religious rights. With regard to international organizations (IOs) in general, “when they are against US interests, the US must be prepared to withdraw.” The report calls for a cost-benefit analysis of every international organization of which the US is a member, and argues that IOs should be considered as vehicles for promoting US national interests.

With reference to the Treasury Department, its focus should be on the international competitiveness of US business, not on equity issues or the global climate, concerns that guided the Treasury Department during the Biden administration. The US should withdraw from the Protocol amending the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. More significantly, Project 2025 suggested that the US should withdraw from the IMF and the World Bank, terminating its contributions to them, and redirecting all foreign assistance to bilateral aid programs.

Implications for the longer term

International norms long associated with the post WWII order have been degraded during the past decade. Norms against the use of force to resolve disputes have been shredded by Russia and Israel. Norms in support of the idea of sovereign equality and the territorial integrity of UN Member States have been disregarded by Russia. Norms in support of liberalizing trade and against mercantilist protectionism have been abandoned by the US. Finally, norms about the proportionate use of force have been disregarded by Russia and Israel, as have norms against attacks on civilian populations, schools and hospitals, and against the use of torture, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide. These norms have all been weakened or degraded during the past decade and may eventually disappear altogether unless they are articulated, re-articulated, and regularly performed by major actors like the United States. We might well be our way into a very different normative world.

The Russia-Ukraine war will probably end sooner than it would have ended had Kamala Harris been elected, but it will likely end on very bad terms for Ukraine. Vice-President-elect JD Vance’s peace plan sounded very similar to Vladimir Putin’s peace plan, ending the war, but on terms in Russia’s favor. The new administration might be able to claim a Pyrrhic victory for ending the conflict, but it will be in exchange for legitimizing inter-state military aggression and territorial annexation. Donald Trump’s recent musings about Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada further weaken norms against the use of force, the occupation and annexation of territory of neighboring states, and the very idea of sovereign integrity of UN Member States. Given Trump’s historical antipathy toward NATO and his wavering with regard to the US commitment to Article 5 of the treaty, the Russians are talking about the division of Europe.

Konstantin Malofeyev, a Russian Orthodox billionaire who has funded a conservative agenda promoting traditional Christian values declared on Telegram that it would be possible to negotiate with Trump, “both about the division of Europe and the division of the world. After our victory on the battlefield.”

Institutional resilience

In the 2016 Geneva Press Club briefing immediately following Trump’s first election, I commented that many social scientists were increasingly enthusiasts of experimental research and that the election of Donald Trump would be a huge social and political experiment. It would be a test of how well domestic US institutions performed in reigning in excesses of executive authority, as well as a test of how international institutions would respond to unpredictable behavior and radical changes of policy.

The US system proved largely resilient during Trump’s first term, and even many international institutions stepped up to the challenge, filling financial gaps when the US withdrew funding for political reasons, such as its support for the UN Population Fund. This time, the guardrails may be off, however, and the systems of checks and balances may fail at the domestic level. This is due to the nature of the electoral victory, winning all of the swing states, control of both houses of Congress, and even a plurality of the popular vote.

As Francis Fukuyama wrote in the Financial Times immediately after the election, “The breadth of the Republican victory, extending from the presidency to the Senate and probably to the House of Representatives as well, will be interpreted as a strong political mandate confirming these ideas and allowing Trump to act as he pleases.” More importantly, the Supreme Court’s ruling expanding executive privilege during the summer of 2024 and the stated intention to appoint senior officials from the ranks of loyalists, rather than on the basis of expertise, will also enhance Trump’s ability to influence the directions of US foreign policy. Although he tried to distance himself from Project 2025, they have a clearly articulated plan of action on how to ensure a major reversal of US government agencies in order to prevent the so-called “grown-ups” in the room from diffusing the impact of some of Trump’s impulsive policy ideas during his next administration.

Implications for world order

As Alexandre Dugin, allegedly one of Vladimir Putin’s political, philosophical, conceptual, and strategic influencers, said on X following the US election, “We have won…The world will be never ever like before. Globalists have lost their final combat.” Illiberal nationalism at the domestic level and spheres of influence at the international level are the apparent winners, not the liberal internationalist rules based international order of the post-1945 era.

In the 9 November 2024 issue of the Financial Times, Francis Fukuyama described classical liberalism as “a doctrine built around respect for the equal dignity of individuals through a rule of law that protects their rights, and through constitutional checks on the state’s ability to interfere with those rights.” When applied to the level of the international system, classic liberal institutionalism analogously supports the equal dignity of sovereign states, with a rule of law maintained by the articulation and performance of norms to protect their rights, and constitutional checks in the form of interventions by the UN Security Council to maintain international peace and security. All of these core elements of the rules-based order are now under threat. Liberal internationalism may be in the process of being replaced by Illiberal nationalism, with spheres of influence and competitive power balancing closer to the security governance system of the latter half of the 19th century than the 20^th century with its consecutive efforts to institutionalize collective security, first in the League of Nations and subsequently in the United Nations.

How might the world respond to the demise of the post-WWII rules-based order?

Some might pursue forms of self-reliance, trying to insulate themselves from the weaponization of the US Dollar. This would entail an attempt to de-Dollarize, diversify reserve holdings, increase currency swap arrangements, and create alternatives to SWIFT that go beyond bilateral trade and financial arrangements. China appears to be pursuing this approach in broad terms, though the efficacy of a BRICS currency and moves to an alternative to the US Dollar are often exaggerated.

Others might choose to step into the gaps left by the US withdrawal from international organizations. China might offer to provide funding for organizations in exchange for institutional reforms, a greater say in how they are run, and more influence on how their resources are allocated. We might also see the further creation of new informal institutions, whether they be inter-governmental or issue-specific transnational entities composed of public and private actors. Some states might choose to underwrite the costs of new organizations to address contemporary governance challenges as they emerge.

Alternatively, we might see an increase in the salience of regions, as trade becomes less globalized and more regionalized. As a result, some of the norms of the liberal and rules-based order may survive at the regional level, such as democracy and human rights in Latin America, for example, or continued adherence to non-intervention within ASEAN.

The British underwrote the institution of free trade at the height of their power in 1870, the Americans did the same in 1945, and perhaps it is China’s turn in 2025. After all, only China has taken the lead in the creation of new formal inter-governmental, treaty-based organizations such as the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank in recent years. Ironically, despite the US domestic consensus about the need to focus on challenges from China, US abdication from global leadership might create possibilities for China that would have been foreclosed or long denied without it.