Rules-Based International Order 1. Trump Imperialism 0 

The successful capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro emboldened Donald Trump’s administration to flaunt its belief that force, not law, governs the world. “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Stephen Miller, top presidential aide, said on CNN, “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Soon thereafter, President Donald Trump began asserting he could take ownership of Greenland by military force.  

Two weeks later, Trump accepted—however tacitly—he does not live that world. Addressing world leaders in Davos, he declared “I won’t use force” to take Greenland. Hours later he accepted a “framework of a future deal” discussed with the Secretary General of NATO, though details remain sketchy and leaders in Denmark and Greenland haven’t signed off on anything.  

The pessimistic analysis of these comments is that they don’t amount to an actual resolution of this manufactured crisis. The chronically erratic president could still wake up tomorrow and order an invasion. With Trump, one can never rule out the possibility of impulsive irrationality. But the fact is he blinked and he blinked for a reason: the stock market was tanking.  

We know the decline in the S&P 500 was on Trump’s mind because he told the Davos crowd, “Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So, Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.” (Trump repeatedly confused Iceland for Greenland in his remarks.) And the market rebounded once Trump backed off.  

We could modify the Miller maxim and pithily conclude that what the world is really governed by is money. However, that would ignore the importance of those “international niceties” otherwise known as laws, rules, and norms.  

Stock traders presumably feared a loss of profits from a burgeoning tariff war that Trump launched in hopes of strongarming Europe over Greenland. But why were so many European nations prepared to go to the mat? Because they believe in the rules-based international order that replaced 19th century imperialism, and the NATO treaty that has buttressed the order. Furthermore, most businesses prefer the stability provided by a rules-based order to the whims of an emotionally stunted, psychologically damaged narcissist.  The rules retain power and the American commander-in-chief bowed to that power. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada shocked the Davos conference when he argued “the rules-based order is fading [as] the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” He went as far as to claim the order was always “partially false” because “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” He urged the world’s “middle powers” to “stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.” 

Yet he also cautioned that “a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.” He advised the middle powers to build “what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored … creating institutions and agreements that function as described.” 

The Greenland backtrack, however, showed that old order is still standing, thanks to the quiet tenacity of the middle powers that was clearly heard by global financiers. Carney’s dramatic conclusion that “the old order is not coming back” overshot the mark. His advice—“diversify to hedge against uncertainty”—with trade and security agreements that don’t necessarily involve the United States, is sound. But that need not require treating the bulwarks of the old order, including the United Nations and NATO, as counterproductive relics.  

The fact that NATO still exists, and that the specter of NATO’s rupture panicked the financial markets, helped keep Trump out of Greenland. 

“Trump steps back from the brink on Greenland. But the damage has been done” blared a recent headline from Politico, informed by pessimistic analysis from foreign policy players and experts on both sides of the Atlantic. The worry is understandable. But Trump’s inability to crack European unity and seize Greenland without sparking an economic meltdown is yet another reminder that he is leading an Ephemeral Presidency. He doesn’t know how to skillfully wield power and has no interest in implementing policies that are built to last. Trump and his inner circle may chafe at how longstanding international rules and norms constrain their imperialistic desires, but they are not as easy to tear down as the East Wing. 

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