08 Jan Sovereignty, moral high grounds and the future of the world order

Just as everyone was recovering from festive frivolities and toasting the end of a turbulent 2025, 2026 arrived with a bang. The first week alone has seen the United States attack Venezuela and capture its then leader Nicolás Maduro, frantic efforts from Europe to protect Greenland from the United States, and the United States’ withdrawal from 66 UN and international organisations. The world has rapidly been thrown into turmoil, the global rules, norms and values that had become increasingly contested in recent years have been thrown further into disarray. 

So what do President Trump’s actions mean for the future of the world order and how much do they really matter?

Venezuela, is, of course, the most directly impacted by recent events, as it scrambles to establish a new political order, under the watchful oversight of the United States. While few will mourn the end of Maduro’s leadership, a period marked by fraud, human rights abuses and corruption, the nature of the United States’ intervention in Venezuela has significant implications for global stability, norms and values. 

Fundamentally, the attack, which the United States has claimed was a ‘law enforcement effort’ to tackle drug trafficking, undermines the international values and norms that underpin the global system. Most critically, it undermines the international norm of state sovereignty, the belief that states have the right to govern themselves and determine their own laws. This norm (combined with military, economic and social pressures) was critical for achieving the relative peace seen in much of the world for much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The United States’ decision to attack Venezuela and further erode belief in that norm has major ramifications, not least for global security. If the West won’t abide by these norms, why should anyone else?

The first risk then is that the United States’ actions may embolden others, not least China and Russia. Not only will they have renewed confidence that the United States is unlikely to intervene if they take coercive action, particularly in their own spheres of influence, but they have also been handed a trump card for calling out Western hypocrisy, if they do decide to. This leaves places like Taiwan rightfully feeling nervous, as nations and territories with strained relations with a more powerful neighbour fear that a return to a politics of spheres of influence could mean they will be pushed around with increasing impunity. 

This does not mean we are about to see conflicts and military interventions popping up all over the world. While other nations may feel emboldened by the United States’ actions, their ability to carry out anything on this scale should not be overstated. For now at least, the United States remains the globe’s preeminent military power, and a Chinese intervention in Taiwan, for example, carries far more risk for Beijing than the action in Venezuela does for Washington. Indeed, the nations that should feel most worried are those that might be the next target of unilateral action by the United States, Cuba and Iran in particular. Mexico, Colombia and Panama too may now be feeling that Trump’s bark may have a bit more bite when it comes to talk of intervention.

The more immediate impact of Trump’s attack will be for ongoing conflicts. Protecting Ukrainian sovereignty has formed the basis of much of the West’s attempts to rally support around the world for Ukraine. With global support for Ukraine already waning, not least due to concerns about Western ‘hypocrisy’ over Gaza, those calls for support for Ukrainian sovereignty will now fall even further on deaf ears. Nations beyond the West will no doubt be questioning why they should support a rules based order where the rules are not enforced equally. 

And as these norms become increasingly contested, so too does the legitimacy and relevance of organisations like the United Nations, which were built to protect these values. A decline that has only been compounded by President Trump’s decision to withdraw from 66 United Nations and international organisations. Without the United States, and crucially its funding, many of these organisations will struggle to have impact and influence. The question is what, if anything, will fill the void their decline creates?

It is, of course, a common pitfall of foreign policy to overstate the impact and importance of one event or series of events. The United States’ actions in the last week haven’t single handedly upended the global system and the rules based order. These have long been in decline, and while President Trump has never been one to abide by norms, the steady decline of the existing global order has no doubt emboldened him to take this course of action. Indeed, events from the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine, through to the failure of the global system to shift in line with the rise of China and now India, underlie the system’s wider failure. But it can be in no doubt that President Trump’s actions have accelerated that decline and left the world in even greater uncertainty.

For the UK this is particularly challenging. Not only has the UK long benefited from the rules based international order that it helped build, but the so-called ‘special relationship’ places the UK in a particularly difficult position. While the UK, understandably, wants and needs to protect one of its most critical international partnerships, alignment with the United States has become increasingly uncomfortable. The UK’s international reputation has long rested on its commitment to international law and turning a blind eye to violations by a close ally can only undermine its standing. Perceived hypocrisy by the UK will only hurt other nations’ commitments to these norms, impacting global security and the future of some of the UK’s critical partners, not least Ukraine.

So far the UK has walked a careful tightrope, avoiding, as far as it can, criticising the United States’ actions or commenting on the legality of the action, while rallying Europe together to protect Greenland from growing threats from the United States. But with growing dissatisfaction in parliament with this approach and growing discomfort with its long term implications for the global order, that tightrope is becoming ever more difficult to navigate.