How Trumpian disorder is all about a new world order

When Donald Trump returned to the political centre of the global attention as the 47th US president, many observers framed his worldview as erratic, isolationist, or impulsive. Yet this interpretation misses something fundamental.

Trump’s foreign policy, both in his first term and in the worldview he continues to articulate during this term, is not a random destruction of the world order. It is an attempt to replace a failing system with a new one, one in which American dominance is no longer hidden behind rules, institutions, or moral language but is asserted openly through leverage, coercion, and civilisational control.

Seen through the lens of Samuel P Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Trump’s strategy looks less like chaos and more like a late, blunt execution of a theory that predicted the collapse of liberal multilateralism three decades ago.

More from Opinion

US Sutra | Dealing with Trump: What India must and must not do West’s ‘rules-based’ lie is exposed: Why Bharat stands to gain from Trumpian disruption

Huntington had then argued that the post-Cold War order would not be governed by universal norms, global institutions, or shared values. Instead, he wrote, the world would reorganise around civilisational blocs led by core states, with power exercised not through institutions but through bargaining, pressure, and dominance. Trump’s America is now acting as though this transition has already occurred and that the United States must move first to secure its position as the core state of Western civilisation before others do the same.

The End of the Illusion of Universalism

At the heart of Trump’s worldview lies a rejection of what Huntington called the “universalist illusion” of the West. After the Cold War, the United States and its allies believed liberal democracy, free trade, and multilateral institutions represented the natural endpoint of history. International bodies like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the International Criminal Court were treated not merely as tools, but as moral authorities meant to transcend power politics.

Quick Reads

View All

US Sutra | Dealing with Trump: What India must and must not do

Why India’s restraint on Trump’s Gaza Peace Board is a wise move

Huntington warned this belief would not survive contact with reality. “The West,” he wrote, “is no longer the universal civilisation. It is one civilisation among many.”

Trump’s foreign policy begins precisely from this assumption. He does not see the UN as a neutral platform. He does not see Nato as a sacred alliance. He does not see trade as a cooperative project. He sees all of them as mechanisms through which American power stands diluted, restrained, or moralised away.

This is why Trump’s first instinct was always to weaken the institutions rather than reform them. He treated the Paris Climate Accord not as a global necessity but as a mechanism through which European states constrained the American industry. He treated the WTO not as a guardian of fair trade but as a legal structure that limited the US leverage. He treated Nato not as collective defence but as a system where America footed the bill while others gained autonomy.

His utter disregard and the subsequent weakening of these institutions are not isolated decisions but are systemic rejections of a postwar order that Trump believes no longer serves American dominance.

Huntington’s Core State and Trump’s America

In Huntington’s framework, civilisations survive and project power through “core states”, with the dominant nations that define identity, set norms, and impose order within their civilisational sphere. Without a strong core state, civilisations fragment, drift, and become vulnerable to rivals. “A world in which core states play a leading or dominating role,” Huntington wrote, “is a spheres-of-influence world.”

Trump’s project is fundamentally about restoring the influence of the United States in this role. But unlike previous presidents, he does not hide this ambition behind the universal language. Instead, he embraces open hierarchy. As per his assertion, the US allies are not equals; they are part of America’s sphere. And those who drift must be corrected.

This logic explains Trump’s hostility toward Europe. After the Cold War, Europe gradually moved away from American strategic dependence. It built its own regulatory systems, climate policies, digital sovereignty laws, and diplomatic frameworks. In Huntington’s terms, Europe was becoming a semi-autonomous civilisational actor, that no longer fully aligned with the American core. Trump is responding not with a carrot of diplomacy but with a stick of discipline. It is in this context that his open declaration to grab Greenland from Denmark, an EU and Nato ally, draws a clear picture.

Trade Tariffs as Civilisational Weapons

Trump’s use of trade tariffs is often misunderstood as economic nationalism. In reality, tariffs for him function as civilisational enforcement tools.

When Trump imposed steel and aluminium tariffs on European states, it was not about trade deficits alone. It was about signalling that the economic access to the American market was conditional on political alignment. When he threatened German automakers, it was not about cars; it was about punishing Berlin’s strategic independence, energy ties with Russia, and refusal to follow Washington’s lead.

The same logic applied to the United Kingdom. Trump supported Brexit not because he cared about British sovereignty, but because Brexit weakened Europe as a competing civilisational pole and forced the UK back into a bilateral dependency relationship with Washington. The preference for bilateral trade deals over multilateral frameworks was not about isolationism; it was about the control through direct leverage, exactly the kind of power politics Huntington predicted would replace institutional governance.

In a civilisational world, Huntington argued, economics becomes a tool of alignment, not efficiency. Trump’s tariffs were signals that loyalty brings access, but on the other hand, independence brings punishment.

The Deliberate Collapse of the Old Order

Trump’s critics often describe him as a wrecking ball. But wrecking balls are used intentionally to clear space for new structures. Huntington’s theory makes clear that the old liberal order could not coexist with a civilisational system of power. It had to be weakened first. “International institutions,” Huntington wrote, “are the reflection of the distribution of power in the world.”

Trump understands this instinctively. As long as the institutions remained strong, American dominance would be constrained by consensus, procedure, and law. By weakening them, Trump is aiming to recentre the global politics around raw power and bargaining, the terrain where the United States remains unmatched.

This is why Trump prefers direct summits over multilateral conferences, personal diplomacy over bureaucratic negotiation, and deals to treaties. It is also why he openly admires leaders who have exercised unchallenged power like Putin and Xi, not because he shares their values, but because he recognises their civilisational clarity.

Gaza and the Death of the UN-Centred Conflict Order

Nowhere is this shift more visible than in Trump’s approach to Gaza and the broader Middle East. His proposal to create a “Board of Peace” for Gaza, bypassing the United Nations entirely, is not just a diplomatic disruption. It is a declaration that the UN is no longer relevant as a conflict arbiter.

In the post-World War II order, legitimacy flowed through international law and multilateral consensus. Trump rejects this model entirely. In his view, legitimacy flows from power and enforcement, and not from procedure.

Huntington predicted exactly this erosion of global legitimacy: “The authority of international institutions depends on the power of the states that support them.” As that power fragments, institutions lose relevance. Trump’s Gaza initiative reflects a world where the US no longer seeks permission to mediate conflict, but it asserts its right to decide outcomes.

This envisioned Board of Peace is not merely about Gaza. It is about establishing a precedent where the future conflicts will be managed by core states within their spheres and not by universal institutions.

The Return of Civilisational Bargaining

Huntington’s most overlooked insight was that the post-Cold War world would not be unipolar or bipolar but multipolar and multicivilisational, managed through negotiation between core states.

“The relatively simple bipolarity of the Cold War,” he wrote, “is giving way to the much more complex relationships of a multipolar, multicivilisational world.”

Trump is preparing America for that world by ensuring it enters as a dominant core, not as a constrained leader. His destruction of the old order is not a retreat; it is a clear positioning of American dominance.

By weakening Europe’s autonomy, disciplining allies, undermining institutions, and restoring leverage-based diplomacy, Trump is ensuring that when the final multipolar system solidifies, the United States will firmly control the Western sphere rather than merely belong to it.

A New World Order Without Illusions

Trump’s doctrine can be summarised simply with the punchline that power must be visible to be effective. For him moral language obscures power, institutions restrain it and consensus weakens it. Trump wants to remove these constraints not because he hates order, but because he is building a different kind of order, one closer to Huntington’s world than to Woodrow Wilson’s or Francis Fukuyama’s.

In this system emerging under Trump, institutions will survive only to the extent that they serve the interests of dominant powers rather than restrain them, and their authority is no longer derived from moral consensus but from the strength of the states that stand behind them.

Alliances, once framed as enduring partnerships rooted in shared values, become conditional arrangements maintained only as long as they deliver tangible strategic or economic returns to the core state. Trade ceases to be a mechanism of mutual prosperity and instead becomes an instrument of pressure, calibrated to reward compliance and punish defiance.

Peace itself is no longer negotiated through neutral forums or international law but imposed through power, leverage, and the credible threat of escalation. In such a system, legitimacy no longer flows from rules, procedures, or global approval; it flows from dominance, from the capacity of a core state to enforce outcomes and shape reality in its own image.

Viewed through this prism, it is fair to say that this is not the end of the world order. It is the end of the liberal illusion that power could be hidden behind rules and equal fairness.

Conclusion: When Theory Becomes Policy

What Samuel Huntington wrote in The Clash of Civilisations as a warning, Trump has turned into a practice manual and a perceived reality. By dismantling the old multilateral architecture, disciplining allies through economic pressure, and asserting American dominance in conflict resolution, Trump is accelerating the transition for the US to a civilisational order where core states rule their spheres and negotiate the boundaries between them.

Whether this perceived world will be a more stable or more violent one remains an open question. But one thing is certain: Trump is replacing the system that his predecessors built. And in doing so, he is proving Huntington’s most unsettling prediction correct: that when universalism collapses, power returns naked, and the world is reordered not by ideals, but by those strong enough to impose them.

(Raja Muneeb is an independent journalist and columnist. He tweets @rajamuneeb. The views expressed in this article are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.)