Donald Trump is leading the world into a new era of disorder. For decades the United States has anchored a post-war liberal international order that, despite its flaws, ensured collective security and supported its democratic allies. Today, that foundation is crumbling.
What follows will not be a stable balance of power, but a world where power-hungry autocrats — Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and yes, Donald Trump — dictate terms to smaller states and squabble among themselves, while alliances fray and nations struggle to survive in a system defined not by steady consensus and cooperation but by rapacity and the whims of lone men.
These are the destroyers — men who revel in chaos, who see partnerships as shackles and diplomacy as weakness. They are not architects of a new global order but vandals, tearing down the old and dragging us toward disaster.
US Vice President JD Vance offered a glimpse of this future at the recent Munich Security Conference, where he launched a blistering attack on Washington’s European allies and questioned partnerships across the world.
Vance’s speech was more than a series of provocations for Fox News loyalists — it was a sneering eulogy for the old world and the rise of an America First empire, hellbent on dismantling the network of alliances and institutions that have long stood as bulwarks against authoritarianism.
In this bitter sermon, Vance chastised America’s friends for what the European far right — and their fellow travelers on the other side of the Atlantic — deem attacks on national sovereignty, free speech, and traditional values. On the brink of a pivotal German election that saw significant gains for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, Vance warned of “the enemy within” –– not neo-fascists, but the committed democrats who seek to isolate them from power.
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The irony is stark. Vance walked the grounds of Dachau, where a fascist regime first imprisoned its political enemies to crush dissent before turning to genocide. Yet the vice president flew to Germany to wage war on the very democratic institutions built to ensure such horrors never return.
And then there’s the American president himself. Trump’s reckless and shortsighted decision to suspend all military aid to Ukraine is nothing short of a gift to Vladimir Putin. This order, effective immediately, halts the delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and ammunition that Ukraine urgently needs to defend itself against Russian aggression.
This comes as Trump publicly berated Zelenskyy in an Oval Office ambush, previously labeled the Ukrainian President a “dictator,” and warned that he “better move fast” or risk losing his country. In a widely shared social media post, he even attempted to rewrite history by echoing Kremlin propaganda blaming Ukraine, not Russia, for starting the war.
The spectacle has left allies and partners reeling. Has he forgotten the horrors of Bucha and the bombing of maternity wards, or is erasing them precisely the point?
Trump’s rhetoric and Vance’s demagoguery are not anomalies; they are curated strategy. The new authoritarians are not lurking in Brussels, Berlin, or Kyiv; they are in Moscow and Washington, rewriting the terms of global leadership in their own grim strongman image.
The question is no longer whether American democracy and the international order it helped build are in decline, but rather, how we arrived at the edge of ruin and whether, by understanding the forces that led us here, we can still stop.
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America didn’t wake up one day to find its democracy besieged and alliances forsaken. The road to this crisis was paved by decades of policy failures — foreign and domestic — that hollowed out institutions, sowed cynicism, and reaped the rise of the far right.
This convergence of foreign policy failures and domestic economic neglect left America vulnerable to authoritarian forces. The instinct of the American far right and far left to view Ukraine as a boondoggle stems from this bitter history.
Many Americans, disillusioned by forever wars abroad and forsaken by their leaders at home, found solace in easy conspiracies and reactionary politics. They were primed to distrust, and the MAGA movement weaponized that distrust in Trump’s service.
Negotiations over Ukraine exemplify this new state of confusion. Trump doesn’t merely exist within a disinformation echo chamber; as Zelenskyy rightly pointed out, he very deliberately contributed to its creation. The resulting torrent of social media falsehoods, curated by American billionaires who owe all they have to the worst predations of lawless capitalism, has only poured oil on the fire.
Today, Americans face not only the erosion of democratic values and the predations of modern-day robber barons — threats they cannot afford to ignore — but also the looming specter of a far greater, far more catastrophic war. The echoes of 1938—of another Munich, of the dismemberment of a sovereign country—grow louder. Then, as now, the world’s leading democracies faced a choice: stand firm against rising aggression or retreat into the illusion of isolation.
History wrote what followed. The belief that Europe could secure peace through appeasement collapsed within a year, as the Nazis’ ambitions for Germany spread unchecked. Today, Putin has made clear his war against Ukraine is not just about territory, but about reshaping the global order in his image.
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If the US betrays its allies and retreats behind the paper walls of “Fortress America,” it will not prevent another war. It will invite it. For US allies abroad, Europe must resist the siren call of authoritarian populism and counter the dangerous influence of billionaire provocateurs like Elon Musk, whose meddling threatens to undermine the very fabric of democracy.
The truth is that many of the same factors that propelled the authoritarian right to success in the US are now evident in Europe: cultural dislocation, economic inequality, and the rapid spread of misinformation. These shared conditions have paved the way for a new transatlantic alliance, one not founded on shared democratic values but committed to their destruction.
The American and European far right are coalescing into a global force — not a disparate collection of national factions, but a well-organized political movement aimed at nothing less than the wholesale transformation of society.
Last month in Maryland, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) showcased this transformation as demagogues gathered for a far-right, pro-Russia jamboree. Among the attendees were Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s ultra-nationalist Vox party, and Jordan Bardella, president of France’s National Rally. These leaders now mingle with the MAGA faithful and openly plot the end of liberal democracy.
Should both sides of the Atlantic succumb, the future that unfolds will be unrecognizable to most — a world of barbed, militarized borders, blotted freedoms, and sapped economic and cultural ties. It will be a world that increasingly mirrors Putin’s Russia — a calamity that, in time, could come to eclipse even his war against Ukraine.
