When President Donald J. Trump declared in Riyadh last week that the United States would “no longer give you lectures on how to live,” he did more than signal a change in tone. He articulated a foreign policy realignment that reflects deeper structural shifts in the international order—shifts that, if carried through a second Trump presidency, may mark the effective end of the post-1945 U.S.-led global project.
Trump’s remarks represent not merely a personal conviction but a recognition of a changing geopolitical landscape, one in which the appeal of U.S. liberal universalism has waned, and where multipolar pragmatism is fast becoming the norm. For many in the Global South, the United States’ historical role as a moral arbiter has lost credibility, undermined by its selective application of democratic principles, long wars in the Middle East, and, most recently, its unequivocal support for Israel amid the Gaza war, an association increasingly viewed as moral complicity.
While Trump is often accused of lacking ideological coherence, this blunt repudiation of moralism in foreign affairs reveals a consistent, and increasingly consequential pattern. He is not attempting to reassert American hegemony as past presidents have. Rather, he is repositioning the United States as a peer power in a fragmented world. This approach, whether deliberate or incidental, aligns with an emerging international consensus that questions the legitimacy of Western leadership, particularly among rising non-Western powers.
As Fareed Zakaria wrote over a decade ago in The Post-American World, the global shift underway is not the decline of the United States per se, but the “rise of the rest.” In this environment, China and the BRICS states have proposed a model of engagement that prioritizes sovereignty over intervention, infrastructure over ideology. Trump’s rhetoric now mirrors this model—eschewing conditionality, minimising alliances, and engaging countries on the basis of transactional self-interest. Such a shift may undermine long-standing U.S. alliances, but it simultaneously speaks to the aspirations of a world no longer content to be lectured by Washington.
This approach also tracks closely with what Kishore Mahbubani, in Has the West Lost It?, describes as the growing disillusionment among non-Western countries with the double standards of Western diplomacy. Mahbubani argues that much of the world no longer accepts the premise that Western values are universal. The appeal of non-alignment and multipolarity, once dismissed as peripheral, is now central to the foreign policy thinking of many middle powers. Trump’s realist disposition, even if poorly articulated, may inadvertently provide a framework for recalibrated U.S. engagement in such a world.
Indeed, this recalibration may reflect an unconscious echo of Paul Kennedy’s thesis in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Kennedy warned that imperial overstretch, committing resources far beyond one’s economic and strategic base, inevitably precipitates decline. The post–Cold War U.S. foreign policy establishment, driven by a belief in American exceptionalism, pursued expansive military and ideological projects without reconciling them to the limits of domestic political will and fiscal sustainability. Trump, through instinct or accident, challenges the logic of perpetual engagement. His disinterest in democracy promotion or alliance maintenance stems from a belief that the costs outweigh the benefits in a world where American supremacy can no longer be taken for granted.
Nevertheless, Trump’s foreign policy is not without contradictions. His desire to reclaim U.S. economic and technological pre-eminence through protectionism and industrial policy is rooted in a nostalgia for mid-century American manufacturing power that no longer aligns with the structure of global capitalism. As Edward Luce noted in The Retreat of Western Liberalism, a return to “national greatness” is not a viable strategy in a hyperconnected world. While Trump sees himself as a realist, he fails to fully grasp the interdependence of the global system he aims to rebalance.
Moreover, his transactionalism lacks the institutional vision necessary to build new coalitions. While he may criticise NATO or multilateral trade agreements, he offers no coherent alternative. This absence of institutional thinking could further erode the U.S. role in setting global norms, ceding that space to rival powers or leading to an increasingly fragmented world order.
Yet it is precisely this willingness to abandon ideological baggage that may make Trump the most consequential American president since the Cold War. His presidency is not about careful diplomacy or long-term planning; it is about exposure. By removing the rhetorical veneer of liberal internationalism, he has forced allies and adversaries alike to confront a different kind of America – one less concerned with global leadership and more focused on self-preservation.
Europe, now more dependent than ever on the U.S. security umbrella, finds itself caught between its values and its vulnerabilities. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between the continent and its eastern neighbour, and Biden’s policy of isolating Russia through energy sanctions has effectively tethered European economic competitiveness to American strategic priorities. Trump’s likely disinterest in Ukraine and continued pressure on NATO spending would deepen this imbalance, leaving Europe either to pursue strategic autonomy or drift further into irrelevance.
Elsewhere, middle powers like India, Brazil, and Indonesia are watching Washington’s pivot with keen interest. They are less invested in the restoration of a liberal order than in the emergence of a pragmatic, pluralistic one. Trump’s abandonment of values-based diplomacy may resonate with these countries, not because they admire him, but because they share his scepticism of Western hypocrisy.
To be clear, Trump’s foreign policy does not herald a new doctrine. It is more rupture than architecture. But ruptures are sometimes necessary preconditions to recalibration. By disengaging from the fantasy that the U.S. can shape the world in its image, he has opened the door to a foreign policy rooted in restraint and realism. Whether that door leads to chaos or constructive adaptation depends less on Trump than on what comes after him.
In the end, Trump may be remembered not for his statesmanship but for his function: a catalyst that exposed the unsustainable assumptions of American global leadership. He is not an architect of a new order, but the unwitting midwife of a post-American world.
That legacy, intentional or not, will shape the contours of international politics for decades to come.
