The new world order according to Trump
In international politics, symbols often carry as much weight as facts. Therefore, the fact that US President Donald Trump abandoned the G-7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, early in June, while bluntly imposing his will at the NATO summit held in The Hague, Netherlands, a week later, is not just a protocol anecdote, but a symptom and allegory of the global reorganization underway. An order where multilateralism is declining, traditional diplomacy is being overtaken, and pragmatic unilateralism—embodied today by the US president—is becoming increasingly precarious. It is imposed as a logic of dominant power.
The comparative results of both summits—held barely a week apart —offer a precise snapshot of this process. Thus, while the G-7 confirmed its growing irrelevance in a world that no longer responds to postwar molds, NATO managed to redefine itself, not out of conviction, but out of necessity, by accepting the rules of a game that no longer seemed to be shared, but simply obeyed by the European and Canadian branches of the alliance.
The G-7 summit in Canada was intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the forum that once spearheaded global economic governance. However, it ended up becoming a display of collective weakness and lack of strategic purpose. Trump's abrupt departure, amid deep trade and geopolitical differences with his allies, left the remaining leaders trying to fill a political void that can no longer be hidden.
The G-7's final statements repeated familiar phrases but lacked any real traction. The joint communiqué on Iran, which called for a military de-escalation, was quickly contradicted by the reality of the events: bombings, missiles, and regional tensions that the G-7 was unable to contain. Regarding Ukraine, while financial and military aid was announced, the position was blurred by Trump's equivocal stance, who again pointed to Russia's expulsion from the group in 2014 as a mistake and downplayed Moscow's aggression.
Strictly speaking, the G-7 has been suffering from an identity crisis for years . It no longer represents the global economy—its members now account for less than 40% of global GDP, compared to over 60% in 1980—and is therefore no longer seen as the "world's governing body." And since Trump knows this and desires it—which clashes with his nineteenth-century vision of the division of global power—he acts accordingly. Along these lines, for the current US president, this summit is not seen as a forum for consensus-building, but rather a waste of time, populated by "profiteering" partners unwilling to share the costs of power, but rather its benefits. Therefore, his early departure, far from being a slip of the tongue, was a strategic statement to the other members, to the invited heads of state, and to the world.
On the other hand, and unlike the G-7, the NATO summit held in the Netherlands produced concrete results. Pressured by the international context—the war in Ukraine, Iran's nuclear threats, Russia's aggressiveness, and, especially, uncertainty about the United States' commitment—the 32 members of the NATO signed a historic agreement to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. This leap—which doubles the current target of 2%—was persistently promoted by Donald Trump, who presented it as a condition for maintaining Washington's protective umbrella over Europe.
The final declaration establishes that at least 3.5% of GDP will be allocated to hard military capabilities—troops, weapons, and deployment—and 1.5% to critical infrastructure, logistics mobility, cyber defense, and innovation. For many countries, this measure represents an unprecedented financial effort, and while Poland, Estonia, Greece, and the United States already exceed the 3% threshold, other large economies—such as Spain (1.3%) and Germany (2%)—face strong political and fiscal resistance to moving in this direction. So much so that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez attempted to impose a 2.1% ceiling and received threats of tariff sanctions from Trump in response: “They're going to pay us for it through trade,” the president declared, confirming his style of direct pressure.
What was most remarkable, however, was not the number, but the process. The summit was designed around Trump, as Mark Rutte—the newly appointed NATO Secretary General—oriented the entire negotiation to please Washington. Not out of conviction, but out of necessity. There were no ideological debates or explicit references to democratic values. The goal was to avoid friction, deliver a symbolic victory to the US president, and ensure his continued support in the Atlantic defense system. The strategy worked, as Trump hailed the outcome as "a monumental victory for the United States" and received public praise from several allies, including Rutte himself.
That said, it's worth noting that NATO's shift toward a budgetary accountability approach represents a profound doctrinal shift. The Alliance, founded in 1949 as a collective response to Soviet expansionism, traditionally operated under the principle of shared deterrence and proportional responsibility. Now, Trump's "non-payer, non-defense" logic breaks with that tradition and transforms collective security into a bilateral transaction . Thus, a strange paradox emerges: on the one hand, Trump weakens multilateralism, but on the other, he strengthens NATO—or, more precisely, he strengthens his version of NATO as a military organization subordinate to US national interests, functional to its geoeconomic objectives, and ready to adapt to its own worldview.
From this perspective, the Atlantic Alliance becomes the US's main tool for conditioning Europe, not only militarily, but also in the commercial, energy, and diplomatic spheres. The recent suggestion to unlink support for Ukraine from US financing if the Europeans fail to meet their commitments stands as the most conclusive proof of this. And the same will surely apply to the mutual defense agreement—the famous Article 5—whose automatic application in the event of a conflict is already being questioned by everyone.
Europe thus faces a fundamental strategic dilemma, given that its dependence on Washington for critical capabilities—intelligence, satellite surveillance, air power, and logistics—is structural for the Old Continent. The idea of an autonomous European defense, recently promoted from Brussels, would take years to materialize, and although Germany and France announced budget increases, technological fragmentation and a lack of political cohesion hinder any immediate progress toward European military sovereignty. What emerges is a reconfigured NATO, where decision-making power is increasingly concentrated in Washington, while the allies try to balance obedience with dignity. The risk is clear: that Europe will end up financing a strategy it doesn't define and facing threats it doesn't control.
Thus, the contrast between the G-7 and NATO revealed not only the new dynamics of the institutions, but also their renewed political orientation. In Kananaskis, Trump scorned a forum he considered obsolete, and in The Hague, he molded another to his liking. But in both cases, their message was the same: the days of multilateralism as we knew it since 1945 seem to be over. The new order is not based on negotiation, consensus, or institutional belonging, but on pressure, alignment, and strategic utility.
This leadership model—more similar to business management than classical diplomacy—is not just Trump's personal strategy, but the expression of a historic moment: the crisis of the liberal order, the fragmentation of the West, the emergence of authoritarian states, and the loss of European centrality, which created a power vacuum that the American leader has not hesitated to fill with brutal sincerity, offensive language, and extremely relative coherence. Thus, the world is reorganizing itself according to new coordinates, in which Western democracies fail to articulate a response that combines strategic firmness, democratic legitimacy, and real autonomy, leaving them trapped in a global architecture where it would seem that decisions are no longer even made at small multilateral summits, but in the office of a single man .
International analyst, director of the European Union-UCES chair
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