From global ‘rule-maker’ to ‘rogue state’

By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist/Author

The second Trump term will mark its first anniversary in just two months, and this past year has been sufficient to cause major upheavals on the global stage.

Indeed, Trump’s foreign policy has taken America’s customary aggressive power projection even further, pushing it beyond the bounds of imperial behavior and transforming it into a mindset where ‘might makes right’.

During this period, Washington’s approach has evolved into one that disregards the law of alliance with almost all countries in the world, including European countries, except Israel, bending international norms to suit its interests and directing the global order and even international law according to its political calculations.

To put it more clearly, Trump has now definitively transformed the US, which had been ‘aggressive and hegemonic’ since the 2000s, into a ‘rogue state’.

The Middle East has emerged as the clearest arena for Trump’s approach.

Trump’s unlimited political, military and diplomatic support for Israel has completely discarded the traditional balance sought by American foreign policy.

His recognition of Jerusalem as the so-called capital of Israel and his legitimization of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights during his first term were a challenge that disregarded the existence of international law.

These decisions were not only a blank cheque for Israel, but also steps that upset the balance of power in the region and pushed the Palestinian issue into its most difficult period in history.

Trump, in his second term, took steps that effectively cemented this stance, ignoring the civilian deaths, humanitarian collapse, and international law in Gaza, thereby adding yet another shameful chapter to US history, much like in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Trump also went down in history as the first US president to bomb Iran and actively engage in war alongside Israel, due to his unconditional support for Israel, despite coming to the presidency with the goal of ‘ending wars around the world’.

But Trump’s recklessness did not stop there.

Another reflection of this was his brazen attempt to purchase Greenland, viewing the world map as if it were a shopping catalogue.

Bringing up the idea of purchasing a country’s territory and, if they refuse to sell, occupying it, as if it were a serious state policy, was actually a cynical update of the West’s colonial mentality.

What happened in the Ukraine issue was actually a continuation of the same line.

At a time when energy resources and geopolitical corridors were gaining importance, Trump’s inconsistent steps towards the Russia-Ukraine war, although dressed up as an approach that would save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, went down in history as one of the most self-serving approaches in modern history.

Trump, who became so reckless as to publicly demand Ukraine’s natural resources in exchange for support, went so far as to berate a state leader who approached the matter cautiously at the White House.

Trump’s relationships with Putin and Xi were two extreme examples of this disorder.

On the one hand, Trump imposed sanctions on Russia and China, while on the other, he displayed a strange and uncertain diplomatic approach with his personal sympathy for these leaders, and continues to do so.

And now Latin America is being added to this picture.

Seeking to control Venezuela’s underground resources and keep the country within his sphere of influence, Trump’s efforts to impose economic siege and trigger regime change have reminded the world of the dark files of Latin America during the Cold War era.

Sanctions have hit the people much harder than the state elite, the social crisis has deepened, economic collapse has accelerated, and now practices such as military threats and coup attempts have repositioned the US in the eyes of the region’s countries not as a guardian of order but as an imperial power reverting to the law of the jungle.

Trump’s basic approach is clear. According to Trump, international law is an obstacle, multilateral mechanisms are a burden, and alliances are only necessary if they serve US interests.

At this point, the US is no longer the ‘guarantor of the global order’; it has become a modern imperialist destructive force that disregards all laws, norms and values for its own interests, acting on the principle that ‘might makes right’. 

History shows us that when great powers become lawless, the global system collapses and a new order is established.

It appears that this period, in which we are witnessing the United States’ complete transformation into a rogue state, will go down in history as the period in which the global system was reshaped.