Much attention in the immediate past week(s) has been paid to the NSS – the US National Security Strategy and the apparent thrust of Donald Trump’s foreign policy as revealed in the document. I was impressed by the CFR Brief put forward by Rebecca Lissner, who is a senior fellow at CFR and a lecturer at Yale. As she described the emerging global order:
“It would be a mistake for allies or adversaries to read President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released late at night on December 4, as a guide to Washington’s moves over the next three years. But it is significant for a different reason: the first MAGA national security strategy previews a new vision of the United States as an illiberal superpower. The United States’ democratic allies around the world, and especially in Europe, should take notice.”
“Elevating once-fringe views into the United States’ most authoritative statement of strategic intent is a stunning victory for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, which is represented most prominently by Vice President JD Vance. It constitutes a sea change in U.S. foreign policy.”
“Perhaps most illustrative of this remarkable shift is that the strategy marks “correcting” the political trajectory of Europe as an explicit goal of American foreign policy. That includes encouragement of “the growing influence of patriotic European parties.” And, in a stark statement, it calls for U.S. policy to prioritize “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.””
Rebecca further reminds us how far this NSS document is from the previous Trump NSS in 2017:
“When Trump last released a National Security Strategy in 2017, it was a sober document that helped solidify a new, bipartisan consensus around the idea of great-power competition with China and Russia. It warned of Beijing and Moscow’s challenges to U.S. power and attempts to erode American security and prosperity.”
“This new strategy does nothing of the sort. Rather than diagnose the strategic threats emanating from China or Russia, it makes clear that a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing” is the lodestar of U.S.-China policy and remains muted about its views of Russia, which it characterizes critically as an existential threat only in the eyes of Europe.”
The NSS may foretell Trump foreign policy, or it may not. But as a statement at least of Trump policy framing it is undeniably – wretched.
Equally important, though with far less attention paid to it, was the release of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) annual report – the 2026 Emergency Watchlist – ‘New World Disorder’. As pointed out by the IRC:
“The Emergency Watchlist report is the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) assessment of the 20 countries most likely to face a worsening humanitarian crisis in the coming year. The report is based on an analytically rigorous process that deploys 74 quantitative and qualitative variables, as well as qualitative insights from the IRC’s experience of working in more than 40 countries, to identify which countries to include on the list and how to rank them. Each year, this methodology allows the IRC to accurately identify 85-95% of the countries that then see the worst humanitarian deterioration over the following year.”
“This year’s Emergency Watchlist comes at an unprecedented moment. Its theme, “New World Disorder,” sounds the alarm on a dangerous divergence: as humanitarian crises are surging, the global support to address them is collapsing. The surging crises and shrinking support that IRC’s clients face are not just a humanitarian failure, but instead the direct consequence of the geopolitical trends redefining how countries interact with one another.”
In other words, the Rules-based Order (RBIO) is under attack. But all is not lost and the Economist identified the ‘good and the bad’ as the The Economist described it:
“The year was a turbulent one, with President Donald Trump disrupting global trade and horrific conflicts scarring places such as Gaza and Sudan. But several countries navigated choppy waters well. Canada elected a sober technocrat as prime minister, rather than a populist, and stood up to American bullying. Voters in Moldova rejected a pro-Russian party despite threats and disinformation from Moscow. Mr Trump brokered a shaky truce between Israel and the Palestinians.”
“South Korea recovered from a serious threat to its democracy. …
“Another exemplar of how to deal with violent attempts to upend the constitutional order was Brazil.”
So where does the global order stand in the face of a second Trump administration, Russian aggression in Europe, the barely Gaza ceasefire, geopolitical tensions between the US and China and more.
First some reaction from David Miliband, the President of the IRC. In an interview with Ishaan Tharoor at WAPO:
““The “New World Disorder” is a description of what’s happening in the world’s conflict zones, where 230 million people are left dependent on humanitarian need. The New World Disorder is the abuse of international humanitarian law in war. The New World Disorder is the internationalization of civil wars, so that they’re no longer internal conflicts between two sides, but multisided, internationalized power plays. The New World Disorder is the growing importance of profit over protection in the world’s conflict zones. And the New World Disorder is a framing of how geopolitics is impacting the lives of the most vulnerable people in the world who are civilians caught up in conflict.””
““I think that we’ve passed a tipping point from the old order. We can no longer say that the rules-based order is the defining anchor of the global system and that there are some problems in its implementation. We now have a base case of disorder, a base case where it’s unusual for rules to be followed rather than not followed. And I think it’s far from clear that we’re going to move into a new order. It’s far from clear to me that we’re moving to a world of spheres of influence.””
““Equally, it’s not clear that somehow regional bodies like the E.U. are going to become defining. I think we are more likely to be living in this more chaotic “might makes right” form of globalization, which is not the reverse of globalization. It’s a more anarchic form of globalization without rules.””…
““It also seems like the international system — the U.N. and so on — is unable to reckon with the situation effectively.””
The global order has been deeply undermined and the maintenance of international rule of law (RBIO) can no longer be assumed whether norms of ‘non intervention’, prohibiting altering borders by force, national sovereignty and more. We have seen that multilateral institutions have weakened dramatically and now the norms and principals have slowly faded.
What will rejuvenate then, the RBIO? It will be a major question and theme for our Posts next year at Alan’s Newsletter.
Have a great Holiday Season! See you in 2026.