Territorial integrity, sovereign interests, and global stability are subordinate to American priorities. This is a permission-based order in which the superpower alone determines the legitimacy of states.
US President Donald Trump (Image: File)
From the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and the unabashed assertion of a Greenland takeover to the fatal shooting of a US citizen by ICE agents in Minneapolis and its open justification by the Trump administration, the opening days of 2026 have an unmistakable American message for the world: the “rules-based international order” and “democratic norms” are standards for the United States to violate at will, and for the rest of the world to uphold under the constant threat of Washington’s fiats. These are not isolated excesses but expressions of a governing logic that now defines American power.
One year into Donald Trump’s second term, the defining feature of US foreign policy is normalisation of disruption. What was episodic destabilisation in his first presidency has become the default pattern of the second—a self-serving, ultra-transactional, and spectacle-driven approach, with little regard for diplomatic dignity, let alone conventions. President Trump has institutionalised the public humiliation of foreign leaders, open threats, and the pursuit of personal gratification as primary instruments of statecraft. Power is exercised nakedly, not out of strategic necessity, but as a raw assertion. From strategic frameworks and partnerships, the Trump administration has shifted to a punishment-and-reward matrix, with both decided by one man’s ego.
Allies and adversaries alike have been driven into anticipation and desperation, scrambling to stay safe from the retribution by the world’s most powerful leader. Diplomacy has been grotesquely reduced to: apologising after a White House ambush (Ukraine), performative flattery (Nobel Peace Prize nomination as well as creating a special peace prize by Israel), inducement through a luxury gift (Qatar), and extortive pledge of vast investment funds (South Korea). This new American statecraft imposes dignity and domestic costs for foreign leaders. The Indian Prime Minister, for example, is deliberately targeted to hurt his image as a strong leader.
On 15 December 2025, Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl and its precursors as Weapons of Mass Destruction. If WMD claims about Iraq were a deliberate intelligence fabrication to shape a specific course of action, this is a deliberate manipulation of logic to bypass the legal and moral constraints of war.
On 3 January 2026, an American military operation extrajudicially captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, bypassing the US Congress and the UN Charter alike. It followed open US declarations of control over Venezuela’s resource extraction and governance. The world must factor in the possibility that this surgical removal of a head of state might have provided the US with a far more economical and faster regime change playbook than US-funded revolutions.
The hypocrisy of the current American posture is staggering even by the historically elastic standards of the West. The United States has disregarded international norms to usurp Venezuela’s sovereign oil resources, but it punishes India with tariffs for the mere act of securing its energy needs from Russia. It has attempted to morally shame India by branding the Russia-Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war,” while simultaneously embracing Pakistan, a state with a long record of sponsoring anti-India terror.
Washington justifies its attempt to acquire Greenland—threatening on 9 January to take it “the nice way or the difficult way”—on the grounds that if not the US, it will be acquired by Russia and China, and the US cannot tolerate those nations as neighbours. However, it conveniently ignores its role in the expansion of NATO into Russia’s immediate neighbourhood, which contributed to the Russian invasion.
The predatory message is clear: territorial integrity, sovereign interests, and global stability are subordinate to American priorities. This is a permission-based order in which the superpower alone determines the legitimacy of states and their actions.
The US has always pursued its interests quite ruthlessly; what defines Trump 2.0 is the brazen disregard for even notional respect for international rules, institutions, or alliances. In the Trumpian era, “might is right” is no longer a subtext but the governing doctrine of America First. Washington no longer seeks to lead the international order; it seeks to transcend it.
The result is a global bystander effect—states recognise the moral corrosion and abuse of power yet remain silent for fear of retaliation. Nowhere is this disorientation more evident than in Europe, the self-appointed moral compass of the world, reduced to a pendulum swinging between self-preservation and principle.
Perhaps the most devastating impact of the last year is the quiet desensitisation of the American populace to this predatory pursuit of power. It creates a dangerous illusion that the world exists solely to serve US interests—a mindset that threatens to erode the US from within.
The predatory approach has turned inward as well. The Trump administration has ordered mass deportations without due process, governed through executive orders, filled the civil service with loyalists, curtailed media freedom, and defied the judiciary. It has also deployed and justified excessive force against its own citizens, most recently witnessed in the 7 January Minneapolis ICE shooting. The erosion of institutional checks is so profound that the rest of the world wonders if checks and balances ever truly existed.
What is worse is the celebration of this regression as proof of strength. The “othering” of humans is framed as a patriotic necessity. Indian Americans, long a law-abiding community that has strengthened the US, are being singled out for targeting. Democratic backsliding is no longer a byproduct of arbitrary governance; it appears structural and deliberate.
Trump 2.0 has been particularly destabilising for countries that sought strategic convergence with Washington. India, the most pro-American nation in BRICS, has been blatantly targeted for the Trump administration’s harshest measures. From imposing high tariffs and weaponising the H1B program, to crossing India’s red lines by repeatedly misrepresenting US mediation in the India-Pakistan ceasefire, and attempting to humiliate the Indian Prime Minister with inflammatory falsehoods, Trump has taken the “art of deal making” to absurd extremes leaving India no choice but to shift its view of the United States to that of an active adversary.
In this author’s view, the US approach vis-à-vis India is not about Russian oil imports or trade concessions; it is about crushing India’s strategic autonomy to compel it into the American alliance model. The US seems to think that India needs the relationship and cannot afford to walk away. What it does not realise is that India values its autonomy far more, and any attempts to subordinate the nation will inevitably provoke resistance from both the government and the public.
When the sole superpower mistreats its own citizens and allies, and deliberately weakens both domestic and international institutions, the world can no longer remain a passive observer. No nation should be allowed to dictate the fate of the rest. India, while traditionally cautious about commenting on the actions of other powers, cannot remain silent. As the world’s largest democracy, a leading voice of the Global South, and an emerging power, it has both a moral and strategic obligation to hold a mirror to such behaviour. Silence may offer short-term benefits, but the long-term cost to national credibility, autonomy, and the integrity of international norms is far greater.
Semu Bhatt is a strategic adviser, author, and founder of FuturisIndia.
