“Donald Trump was hardly a steward of responsible global governance,” begins an op-ed in the {Los Angeles Times, and he “has little evident regard for the ‘rules-based international order’.… However, therein lies an opportunity.” Written by Samuel Moyn, law professor at Yale, and Trita Parsi who leads the Better Order Project at the Quincy Institute, the authors argue that Trump’s takedown of the “rules-based order” may not be all that bad, if an order can be put in place that better responds to the emerging “multipolar world.”
The so-called rules-based order “has come to symbolize American hypocrisy and double standards,” the authors write, and go on to say that it has come to be viewed by many internationally “not as complementary to international law, but as a threat to it.”
Therefore, they write: “That makes Trump’s choices essential. He appears to be open to a multipolar world, though his investment in rules and laws is a different matter. But if he is serious about reducing America’s global military footprint, bringing our troops home and ceasing to play the increasingly unwanted role of world police, then avoiding anarchy and promoting peace by sustaining a multilateral system will serve U.S. interests and thus Trump’s.”
The op-ed poses that Trump’s “transactionalism” and orientation of advancing America’s interests, in contrast to the moralizing typical of the Washington “blob,” “may enable Trump to jettison Washington’s mythmaking about its coalition-of-the-willing international order.”
Moyn and Parsi then make their somewhat underwhelming recommendation: “Some existing norms, laws and institutions encourage a range of good outcomes and deserve to stay in place, among them United Nations Charter rules that constrain force and the United Nations itself. As for ending the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, that will depend on the art of the deal. But everything depends on whether the bargaining occurs in the shadow of some belief that it is better to have fair, common standards.” They conclude by writing: “The rules-based international order has betrayed that possibility. Over the next four years, America needs to do better.”
While making a useful attack on the hypocrisy of the current architecture, and importantly pointing out the need to have some lawful replacement to it, the authors unfortunately fall short of identifying the main failed axiom of the rules-based order, namely the absence of taking the interests of every nation into account. The proper question at this juncture is whether Trump will move the U.S. away from its role as a global empire, and rediscover its original anti-colonial identity.
