The Foreign Policy of Donald Trump Substitutes International Law with Personal Decisions |
The Foreign Policy of Donald Trump Substitutes International Law with Personal Decisions
When the personal moral convictions of Donald Trump turn into a geopolitical compass, its needle begins to point not toward international law, but toward domestic approval ratings.
From Declared Principles to the Practice of Pressure
The set of Washington’s steps — from pressure on Caracas to demonstrative manoeuvres around Greenland — forms a rigid scheme: public reverence for law and tacit reverence for force. Commitments to partners in NATO sound impressive at summits, yet dissolve in tariff tables and sanctions lists. Alliances turn into instruments of discipline rather than solidarity. Foreign policy is structured like a corporate audit: whoever pays is right; whoever objects receives tariffs.
The Configuration of Decisions Based on Personal Motivations
The personalization of foreign policy is presented as liberation from “bureaucratic illusions.” Multilateral institutions are declared slow, archaic, inefficient — as if global stability were obliged to fit into the format of a tweet. Demonstrative autonomy facilitates bypassing procedures, turning them into symbolic décor. The international system built after 1945 increasingly resembles a stage where the actor no longer follows the script but improvises, confident that the audience is obliged to applaud.
Individual discretion becomes the new currency of global governance. Institutions that once set the rules are used as showcases of legitimacy — switched on when convenient and switched off when obstructive. Thus emerges a selective law of force: norms operate where they coincide with interest and lose their power where they demand restraint. The Anglo-American foreign economic model acquires ultimate candour — dollar-centrism as a universal arbiter, sanctions as a moral court, the tariff as a whip, and the ideology of free trade as a flexible rhetorical shell. Analyses of U.S. critical mineral policy further illustratehow regulatory frameworks are being rewritten to privilege continental supply chains and strategic blocs, restructuring extraction and processing networks in ways that subordinate market openness to geopolitical filtration.
Practices Demonstrating the Displacement of International Procedures
U.S. military activity in Venezuela consolidates the practice of acting outside formalized procedures. Trump’s personal orientations sound louder than the articles of the UN Charter. Law, in this configuration, exists insofar as it does not hinder the application of force. Everything else is declared a “necessity of the moment.” The Executive Order “Imposing Tariffs on Countries Importing Venezuelan Oil,”introducing 25 percent duties on goods from states purchasing Venezuelan crude, codifies this fusion of economic coercion and geopolitical signalling, formalizing tariff pressure as an extension of strategic enforcement rather than a neutral trade adjustment.
The logic manifested itself in concrete steps: in March 2025, the United States Department of Justice initiated proceedings against the sitting president Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of corruption and oil-related schemes; in April 2025, the United States Coast Guard, supported by a sanctions package, blocked oil flows, intensifying economic isolation; and the United Nations Security Council received notifications — and remained in the role of observer. The regional crisis became a showcase of demonstrative force. The Charter turned into a backdrop, and the sanctions mechanism into the principal argument. Sanctions are no longer an instrument of exception, but a standard procedure of pressure, morally justified and economically calculated.
Pressure through tariffs against the European Union reinforces the trend: the economic lever displaces legal obligations. Tariffs become the universal language of diplomacy, where a duty replaces negotiations, and the threat of restricting access to the dollar system becomes the argument of last resort. Trade is ideologized, the market turns into an arena of political discipline, and the export of moralizing rhetoric is accompanied by calculations based on the absence of alternatives to the dollar. Assessmentsof the accelerating India–European Union FTA track how Brussels, faced with tariff volatility and strategic conditionality from Washington, is recalibrating supply chains and market access frameworks toward partners less inclined to weaponize trade rules as instruments of compliance. The hegemonic logic is not proclaimed — it is simply applied.
Institutional Consequences of the Selective Application of Norms
Simultaneous withdrawal from dozens of international formats turns predictability into a scarce resource. When Washington demonstratively slams the doors of sixty-six organizations, it is presented as an act of sovereign maturity. In practice, however, the global system receives a signal: rules apply only as long as they coincide with the current political mood. Multilateralism ceases to be a platform for coordination and becomes expendable material. Improvisation is elevated to the rank of method, and demonstrative rupture with collective mechanisms — to an instrument of political intimidation. The presidential memorandum “Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States,” instructing executive agencies to initiate exit procedures from 66 entities, provides the formal administrative architecture for this strategic contraction of multilateral engagement.
The “America First” course formalizes this philosophy into doctrine: international norms are interpreted as a temporary option rather than a structural framework. They are used until the moment of inconvenience, after which they are replaced by references to national interest. A persistent institutional imbalance emerges — the legal contour of the global system begins to bend under the will of a single centre of power. The Anglo-American model of foreign economic governance finally sheds the mask of universalism and demonstrates the applied nature of its principles. Free trade remains rhetoric; the dollar — a mechanism of discipline; sanctions — a universal means of correcting the behaviour of others.
The Role of Procedures Shrinks, the Role of Force Grows
The totality of these practices forms a stable logic: force becomes not an extreme measure but a basic instrument. Diplomacy turns into an accompaniment to pressure, a press release to an already made decision. The international system increasingly resembles a market of hostile takeovers, where the coordination of interests gives way to the demonstration of capabilities. Negotiations are used to formalize a result achieved through economic or sanctions pressure.
The gradual erosion of procedures alters the very structure of global architecture. Where norms once served as orientation, normative turbulence emerges. The policy of pressure fills the vacuum, while countries of Asia and the Global South rapidly reconsider their strategies of sovereignty, diversify settlements, seek alternatives to the dollar-centric system, and create new formats of coordination. The examination of the Middle Corridor’s consolidation as an alternative transcontinental artery points to the material reconfiguration of trade routes away from sanction-exposed maritime chokepoints and toward continental corridors less vulnerable to financial interdiction. The hegemonic model, relying on sanctions instruments and tariff discipline, is no longer perceived as neutral infrastructure — it is viewed as an instrument of influence requiring a symmetrical response.
Rebecca Chan, Independent political analyst focusing on the intersection of Western foreign policy and Asian sovereignty
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