Ongoing reports and analysis

U.S. foreign policy during Donald Trump’s second term has unleashed deep and wide-ranging concern about international stability and the future of the global order. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump has created a “rupture in the world order”; Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, following Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, said that the old world order “is now gone.” The Munich Security Report 2026, released ahead of the eponymous conference, described U.S. policy under Trump as a “sweeping destruction” of the post-1945 order, whereas others have called it “the great dismantling” and even the end of modernity. Trump’s war against Iran has further inflamed tensions between Washington and its allies, weakening U.S. influence around the world.

However, the U.S.-led world order already ceased to exist long before Trump’s return to power. Neither he nor his MAGA movement are the main drivers of change; current Washington policies are better understood as a symptom of fundamental structural shifts that have already occurred. Indeed, the rise of right-wing populism, nationalism, protectionism, and heightened geopolitical contestation reaches far beyond Trump.

U.S. foreign policy during Donald Trump’s second term has unleashed deep and wide-ranging concern about international stability and the future of the global order. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump has created a “rupture in the world order”; Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, following Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, said that the old world order “is now gone.” The Munich Security Report 2026, released ahead of the eponymous conference, described U.S. policy under Trump as a “sweeping destruction” of the post-1945 order, whereas others have called it “the great dismantling” and even the end of modernity. Trump’s war against Iran has further inflamed tensions between Washington and its allies, weakening U.S. influence around the world.

However, the U.S.-led world order already ceased to exist long before Trump’s return to power. Neither he nor his MAGA movement are the main drivers of change; current Washington policies are better understood as a symptom of fundamental structural shifts that have already occurred. Indeed, the rise of right-wing populism, nationalism, protectionism, and heightened geopolitical contestation reaches far beyond Trump.

The scale and depth of these changes have unleashed a debate about which similarly disruptive historical era might best help us understand and navigate the current upheaval. The three periods often suggested are the late 1800s, the 1930s, and the Cold War.

The origin of the current anti-democratic and nationalist turn in U.S. and European politics has much in common with the rise of militant nationalism in the 19th century. In the 1890s, both sides of the Atlantic saw a strong nationalist and protectionist response to a longer period of globalization, deregulation, and free trade, just like today’s populist right leverages a growing sense among Western electorates that economic liberalism and globalization have left people powerless. Some observers furthermore claim that the end of U.S. hegemony will lead to a new multipolar age resembling the great power rivalries of late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that was characterized by intense arms races, great power claims to spheres of influence, geopolitical confrontation, and war. Yet the late 1800s differs from the present in fundamental ways. Any serious look at the balance of power today makes clear that we are living in a........

© Foreign Policy