What the world looks like governed by the rules of Trump and Putin. From international rules to the politics of force
The world appears to be entering a new phase of international relations—one in which the rules established after World War II are increasingly being ignored, and great powers are openly acting in accordance with their own strategic interests. At the center of this change are two dominant political figures: US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, meeting in Alaska/PHOTO: AFP
Italian analyst Daniele Stracquadanio, a researcher at the University of Trento, writes in The Moscow Times that Trump's return to the White House has accelerated a major transformation in global politics. In Moscow's view, this development confirms a long-awaited thing: the end of the era of multilateralism and the unreserved return of “great power” politics.
From international rules to the politics of force
In the new context, flagrant violations of state sovereignty — such as the invasion of Ukraine — are no longer automatically treated as acts of international isolation. On the contrary, say some analysts, they risk becoming an increasingly accepted practice in the global politics of the 21st century.
Four years after the West strongly condemned the Russian offensive in Ukraine, official American discourse is beginning to resemble Moscow's rhetoric more and more. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently justified the idea of pre-emptive strikes to avoid possible Iranian retaliation against Israel, while US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the United States did not start the conflict but is trying to end it.
In parallel, calls for uprisings against regimes deemed “illegitimate” — be it “Iranian terrorists” or “Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” as Russian propaganda claims — have become rhetorical tools used by both camps.
Moscow criticizes, but avoids confrontation
The Russian Foreign Ministry recently described the attack on Iran as “a planned and unprovoked act of aggression against a sovereign UN member state.” However, President Vladimir Putin avoided an outright condemnation.
Instead, the Russian leader limited himself to calls for de-escalation and offered himself as a mediator, a gesture interpreted by some observers as a tacit acceptance of the new geopolitical reality: great powers no longer ask for anyone's permission when defending their strategic interests.
From multilateralism to unilateral actions
There have always been double standards in international relations, but the current transformation seems deeper than mere foreign policy contradictions.
The United States has also resorted to unilateral actions in the past. In 2003, the administration of President George W. Bush invaded Iraq citing weapons of mass destruction. Even then, however, Washington tried to gain some form of international legitimacy through the United Nations.
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When this was not possible, the US created the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”, involving dozens of states in the operation.
The same pattern of seeking an international consensus was also visible in 2011, when the Security Council authorized the intervention in Libya, or in 2014, when the operations in Syria were justified by the fight against the ISIS group.
But today, say some analysts, these justifications are increasingly rare.
A new geopolitical reality
Washington is increasingly conducting unilateral military operations without seeking the approval of international institutions, an approach that critics say increasingly resembles the logic of Russian military interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
Even Western allies seem to recognize this shift.
At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the “pleasant fiction” of a rules-based world order has ended and been replaced by a harsher reality in which great powers pursue their interests without constraint.
For her part, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that the European Union can no longer defend the old international order alone and must adapt to an era dominated by geopolitical realism.
The head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, warned that international norms and institutions built over the past 80 years are increasingly weakened.
A world organized by spheres of influence
More and more analysts believe that the world is moving towards a system in which great powers claim their own spheres of influence — whether in Russia's “near neighborhood” or in strategic regions further afield.
In this new model, states are divided into levels of power. Countries like Ukraine, Venezuela or Iran risk becoming secondary actors, whose security depends on the interests of the great powers around them.
Some analysts warn that this development is reminiscent of the logic of the Brezhnev Doctrine during the Cold War, when Moscow reserved the right to intervene in the Soviet bloc states.
A more unstable world
The major difference compared to the Cold War period, however, is the lack of clear rules of the geopolitical game.
In the past, the world was divided between two relatively stable ideological blocs. Today, these boundaries are much more fluid and power relations are changing rapidly.
In this geopolitical landscape, the author of the analysis concludes, the United States and Russia seem less and less ideological rivals and more and more the architects of a world in which the rule of international law is replaced by the rule of force.
