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The security of the old world order is being blasted away with every airstrike to enforce the will of Donald Trump so he can assure his followers he is making America great again. The US president who ridiculed regime change is now vowing to run Venezuela, turn a profit from its oil, and demanding control of Greenland in the hope of painting the world map with the US stars and stripes.

The Trump vision comes with proof of his willingness to deploy hard power, rather than merely posting “truths” on social media, to get his way. It includes bombing Caracas, capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and seizing oil tankers on the high seas. And it shakes old alliances because it comes with a signal that he could use force against others – even NATO members – if they do not submit to his plans.

It feels like a new world disorder. The sense of balance in world politics is shifting and a new era of great power competition is under way. In this world, might is right. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin believed it already. Trump has signed up as well.

US President Donald Trump can turn on allies in an instant, even when seeming to work with them.Credit: Bloomberg

“It’s not about the rules-based order any more. That’s gone,” says Michael Clarke, a visiting professor at King’s College London, a former director-general of the Royal United Services Institute and a former defence adviser to British governments.

Clarke sees an era of major rivals seeking to impose their will across their spheres of influence. American allies, he says, must adapt because they have no choice but to survive in this new dispensation. He quotes an adage: If you’re not running a sphere of influence, you’re in one.

There are four major powers in this world view: the United States, China, Russia and India. This seems generous to Putin, given the weakness of the Russian economy, but Russia is a nuclear state that is aggressive in using its military.

“The reason those big powers are important is that they create the political weather for everybody else,” Clarke says. “And three of those four powers are revisionist. The US, China and Russia are all trying to change the old system that we’ve lived with now for the last 80-odd years.

“And two of those four powers are rogue states. Russia, and America now under Trump, are behaving like rogue states in that they’re undermining very directly the politics of countries around them.”

Trump’s intervention in Venezuela is not a seismic shift in itself, given that US presidents have used force in Latin America for decades. George H.W. Bush sent troops into Panama in 1989 to replace its leader, Manuel Noriega, and put him on trial for drug trafficking. Trump merely does the same, albeit with newer technology so he can watch it live from his Florida estate.

What has changed is the context. Trump can turn on allies in an instant, even when seeming to work with them. The alarming factor over the past week has been the way the White House picked fights with NATO allies over Greenland........

© The Sydney Morning Herald