In Iran, Venezuela, and Greenland, with sabre rattling at Canada and Panama, and aggressive tariff blackmail against nearly every country, US president Donald Trump has shaped a new modus operandi for America’s projection of power on the world stage: coercion. “Do what I want or face the consequences” is the message to allies and traditional enemies alike.
It marks a profound and deeply worrying strategy shift by the US, which since the second World War retained its predominance and global peace through co-operation, multilateralism, alliances, free trade and multinational organisations. Most were shaped by the US and sustained by a framework of law and consensual participation. Even the smallest countries had a place at the table at important organisations like the UN.
In a few short weeks in 2026 the US president has upped the ante further. In invading and trying to control Venezuela, in threatening to annex Greenland and to bomb Iran – again – he has torn up the agreed rulebook and fatally undermined the international legal order. He is even sanctioning the judges of the International Criminal Court for their temerity in passing judgment on Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Political scientist Michael Beckley argues that the US is becoming “a rogue superpower, neither internationalist nor isolationist but aggressive, powerful, and increasingly out for itself.”
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Anything goes as the constraints are whittled down, the legal system ignored, aid agencies impoverished, and the global health system is cut back on the orders of an American president who despises multilateral organisations. In the spirit of Henry Kissinger, Trump is asserting that “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
Trump is convinced that such is the power of the US it does not need cooperation with others. This is the way things are, it seems to say – the neutral are weak, the powerful will come out on top.
Trump is profoundly wrong about his assumptions, and in the end the US – and others – will pay the price for his folly. Interdependence and the interconnectedness of economies are the key features of the new global order.
Bullying Denmark will make the US weaker and perhaps even poorer. The Arctic territory is part of a major trading bloc, the European Union, which will stand by it and is already quietly discussing possible trade sanctions – a language Trump understands. An invasion of Greenland would almost certainly collapse Nato, leaving the US without the shield in depends on to confront Russia and China.
But the US president, unconstrained at home and emboldened overseas, is in a hurry, not least given the prospect of Democratic success in midterm elections later this year. In the meantime, America’s allies look on with alarm.
