Events since the beginning of 2026 have suggested the collapse of the “rules-based world order” that has held sway since the end of the Second World War.
US president Donald Trump ordered the seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, threatened Columbia and Iran, and reasserted his determination to take control of Greenland. He has claimed American hegemony in Western Hemisphere, and seems prepared to allow other nations, including China and Russia, to have control over their own geographical spheres of influence. It feels as if the world is returning to the era of competing empires, with great powers forcing their will on smaller vassal nations. Britain feels especially vulnerable to this change because we are no longer the world power we were in 1945.
This new realpolitik assumes the ultimacy of sheer power. Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, said in an interview about Greenland “we live … the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” President Trump told The New York Times “I don’t need international law” and that the only constraint on his power is “my own morality”.
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