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Rahul Mohanty and Prabhash Ranjan, “Trump 2.0: A Disruptive Peripeteia for International Law,” ORF Occasional Paper No. 538, Observer Research Foundation, April 2026.
Since the United States (US) ended its isolationist policy and emerged as a great power in international relations, American presidencies have mattered a lot for the rest of the world, including the international legal order. Each US president, starting with Franklin Roosevelt, has left their mark on international law.[1] This is also because of some important executive powers that the US president enjoys, relating to international law in the American legal and political system.[2] At several junctures, such as during the US–Vietnam war in the 1960s or the US–Iraq war in the early 2000s, American presidencies have been seen as undermining and violating international law. Yet, the US has continued to participate in international agreements and institutions, and for a long time was a cornerstone of the international legal order. It has also been the principal guarantor of the post-war international legal order and has played a critical role in nurturing it.[3]
President Donald Trump’s first term (20 January 2017–20 January 2021) saw the start of an almost unprecedented level of disengagement and withdrawal from international law.[4] In January 2025, Trump was re-elected as US president, and the Republican Party, to which he belongs, now holds the majority in both the Senate and the House of Congress. A number of important decisions with far-reaching domestic and international impact were made within a few weeks of his inauguration.
This paper seeks to understand the nature of risks and the likely impact of the Trump presidency on the international legal order. It situates the discussion within the broader debate on the role of great powers and analyses the factors that make this presidency especially consequential for international law. It attempts to discern the unique facets of the Trumpian vision of international law and discusses specific risks it poses. Finally, it considers what the future may hold.
Incumbent great powers, or even declining ones, usually seek to preserve the status quo in international relations and the international legal order, believing that this would be beneficial to maintaining their power.[5] Rising powers, however, are expected to be revisionist, seeking either normative changes or even an overhaul of the existing order. Some analysts have claimed that this clash of status-quoist and revisionist powers could even lead to wars—referred to as the “Thucydides Trap,” [a],[6]—bringing about structural changes to the existing order.
However, as global affairs analyst Steve Chan has argued, the US has been increasingly behaving like a revisionist power, especially since Trump’s first term.[7] Conversely, many rising powers, such as China, that have also benefited from the existing legal order, seem more status-quo-oriented.[8] Part of this may stem from Trump seeing American influence as diminishing and therefore aiming to arrest that decline. This paper describes how his actions appear to be disruptive of the international legal status quo. This has important implications for the legal order, which seems to have suddenly lost the backing of its chief architect.
International law has always had an ambivalent relationship with great power politics, especially because, as analyst and former diplomat Martti Koskenniemi has argued, there is no binary choice between the realms of law and politics, and most problems can be viewed from either perspective. [b],[9] Historical examples, from the Spanish Empire to the British Empire and ultimately that of the US, show that hegemonic states’ relationship with international law has oscillated between attempts at instrumentalising it for national advantage, and withdrawing from it.[10] As legal scholar Nico Krisch has noted, hegemonic states, while withdrawing from international law and seeking to reshape it in a softer, yet more hierarchical legal order, often use their domestic law for international purposes. They seek to “export” their local methods and priorities, using them as tools of foreign policy and “informal diffusion.”[11] (There are many ways of destabilising existing norms and triggering changes in institutions of international law, depending on the nature of the changes being sought and the actors seeking them.)[12]
One way of viewing the actions of the Trump administration in accelerating a ‘withdrawal’ from international law is seeing them as a continuation of this strategy, which exerts pressure on international institutions and other actors to internationalise its domestic legal norms. This view, however, may not entirely encapsulate the nature and extent of the changes sought by the administration. It is important to distinguish between normative changes, or even structural changes, in international law and international institutions, and fundamental changes that may overhaul the global legal order.
The first type of change typically comes through pathways and mechanisms provided within the legal system, including various state-led negotiations, or judicial or institutional pathways.[13] It could also come from informal ways of norm adjustment, through pressures of either dominant actors or resistance from the bottom by subaltern groups.[14] The second type of change, on the other hand, typically results from exogenous factors, like wars or revolutions, leading to structural changes.[15]
Many of the US’s recent actions and the changes sought by it are beyond just seeking normative changes in international law. At the same time, perhaps they do not yet rise to the level of a complete replacement of the existing order with a new one. This has led to a peculiar position where the existing great power seems to be undermining the existing legal order, without providing a legal alternative. At this stage, political science and law professor Mark A. Pollack’s distinction between ‘traditional change agents’ and ‘hostile change agents’ in international law may be useful. Pollack theorises traditional change agents as those that seek changes by “persuading other actors to accept a change to, or reinterpretation of, existing norms.”[16] Though they may occasionally resort to pressure tactics and questionable actions, these are used selectively, since the goal is not to destroy the legal order but to persuade others to accept some changes within it. On the other hand, ‘hostile change agents’ often attack the international rule of law, taking unilateral actions that fundamentally undermine the law-based system. In reference to Trump’s first term, Pollack argues that he was a genuinely disruptive ‘hostile change agent,’ taking unilateral actions that sought to escape from or weaken the core agreements and institutions underlying the international legal order.
This weakening may have long-term implications beyond the tenure of the Trump administration. International law has a certain relative autonomy,[17] and its institutions may be path dependent[18] and resistant to knee-jerk changes induced by power politics. As former Legal Advisor to the US Department of State Harold Hongju Koh has noted, the internal resistance of participants in the “transnational legal process,” including many US officials and those in several international organisations, was able to blunt several of Trump’s policies in the first term, and limit the damage to international law.[19] However, as Trump overcomes this path-dependency-led internal resistance in his second term, and his attacks on international law are successful, these “hostile changes” may themselves become entrenched within the path, which would be difficult to reverse and could outlast his government.[20]
Pollack’s characterisation, read together with Chan’s observation about the turn to revisionist foreign policy by the US, shows the complex interplays between power transition and changes in international law. So far, the structural impact of the ‘new Great Powers,’ namely, China and other BRICS nations,[c] on the current international legal order, has been limited.[21] While seeking several changes in the norms and structures of international law, and despite their ambivalence about certain regimes, these rising powers have been largely supportive—or agnostic, at worst—to international institutions and the international legal edifice.[22] Countries like China and India have primarily sought to operate, or at least present themselves as operating, within the existing international legal order while, at times, creating new institutions or seeking to reform certain norms or institutions.[23] This has resulted in increased resort to bilateralism and regionalisation, though within the existing structures of international institutions and regimes.
However, with the almost antagonistic disregard for international institutions initiated by the Trump administration, the rising powers may also feel encouraged to stop investing in existing international systems and organisations. An example is international trade law, with the Trump administration using reciprocal tariffs[24] to force other World Trade Organization (WTO) countries into signing sectoral trade agreements with the US that are not necessarily consistent with their obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).[25] The WTO system operates on the principle of the most favoured nation (MFN), which prohibits discrimination between trading partners. Therefore, a bilateral or free trade agreement (FTA) that grants preferential access to certain countries violates the MFN rule, although countries can still establish FTAs under specific conditions. One of these conditions, outlined in Article XXIV.8(b) of the GATT, requires member countries to eliminate customs duties and other trade barriers on ‘substantially all the trade’ within the FTA. This makes shallow trade agreements between two or more WTO members illegal. However, with the increasing resort to reciprocal tariffs, sectoral trade agreements, and more by the US, other countries like China may follow suit, further weakening the global trade system. [d],[26]
Histories of international law typically show that its ambit has been gradually expanding beyond the state-centric arenas of war and diplomacy, and that this expansion greatly accelerated post 1945. As early as in 1926, for instance, political science professor Pitman B. Potter cited broad agreements reached on issues such as extradition and immigration to highlight their gradual transfer from national to international jurisdiction, arguing that “after a given subject has been voluntarily given treaty regulation for some time, it is no longer possible to object that it is a subject improper for regulation in such a manner. It must soon become impossible to contend that it is a subject suitable for unilateral national statutory regulation.”[27]
Within a decade of the end of the Second World War, legal expert and former Director-General of the International Labour Organization C. Wilfred Jenks noted the remarkable growth in the scope and substance of international law, and maintained that it could no longer be satisfactorily understood within the existing limited perspective of being “law between nations.”[28] By 1993, professor and lawyer Jonathan I. Charney was pointing out that the proliferation of international treaties, together with international organisations, had led to almost all aspects of contemporary international relations being facilitated by legal principles.[29]
The expansion has continued into the twenty-first century, in newer, hybrid forms, beyond the multilateral treaties that were popular in the post-war period.[30] Globalisation has led to expansion of global rules, institutions, hybridised and transnational regimes, and more, leading some to remark that international law had expanded and evolved into “global law.”[31] No doubt, this has not always been a net positive, especially for the Global South,[32] leading many to seek normative and structural changes in it, but only a few would discount its relevance.[33] As professor of international law Onuma Yasuaki has discussed, the raison d'être of international law goes beyond mere bindingness, and has communicative, value-declaratory, justifying, and legitimating value.[34]
As the primary great power of this age, the US has always had a complex relationship with international law. It was one of the primary drivers of the post-1945 world order, including the setting up of the key international institutions that emerged during this period, and has shaped their norms, priorities, and agendas to suit its interests.[35] The US’s imprint is clearly visible in practically all areas of international law, ranging from climate-change-related laws to space laws to human rights laws. But most of all, it is seen in the architecture of international economic law, be it those relating to the WTO or international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. At the same time, the US has also often selectively followed a policy of self-exceptionalism, violating or sidelining the very norms and institutions of international law that it helped create, while expecting other countries to adhere to them.[36]
This has been the case under many US presidencies, but the Trump administration has introduced further challenges. The Trumpian vision of international law and external relations appears to harken back to a “sovereigntist” notion of international law.[37] Its basis is an anti-internationalist strand of politics that misconceives entering multilateral treaties or joining international institutions and regimes as unacceptably limiting sovereign authority and fettering domestic law-making.[38]
During Trump's first term, he was sceptical of multilateralism and showed a marked preference for bilateral negotiations and agreements.[39] His administration withdrew the US from numerous treaties and international organisations. In particular, the US quit the historic 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2017[40] (and again in 2025), [e],[41] despite being a key participant in designing it and having very few concrete obligations under it.
Trump’s negative views on key international economic law principles and institutions are well-known, as is his love for tariffs. [f],[42] He feels that the US has lost out under the Washington Consensus-based model of international trade and investment law. His administration has continued the US policy of obstructing appointments to the Appellate Body of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, ultimately leading to its dysfunction.[43] Recently, the US announced that it would be pausing financial contribution to the WTO.[44]
In his first term, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)[45]—a key trade agreement signed by President Barack Obama’s administration to create a trade bloc of influential economies in North America, Asia, and Australia to counter the trade threat from China.[46] The US also replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).[47] Despite negotiating and signing the USMCA, Trump’s actions—barely weeks into his second term—of imposing high tariffs on Mexico and Canada almost amounted to an abandonment of the USMCA.[48]
Beyond the economic front, Trump’s administration has withdrawn from several significant treaties, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia,[49] the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights with Iran,[50] the Treaty on Open Skies,[51] and the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes.[52] In addition, it has exited crucial international organisations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO),[53] the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC); has frozen the funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and ordered a review of US support to all international organisations.[54] Based on this review, the Trump 2.0 administration has recently withdrawn the US from 66 international organisations (31 UN entities and 35 non-UN organisations) which “no longer serve American interests.”[55] The last of the nuclear arms control treaties (the ‘New START’ [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] with Russia) was also allowed to lapse on February 5, 2026 without signing a fresh one, on the grounds that it was ineffective and the US was seeking a ‘better’ arms control treaty. In a statement before the Conference on Disarmament, the US expressed that its expiry marks the end of its unilateral restraint. [g],[56]
Many of these decisions have been sought to be justified in the name of preventing others from ‘taking advantage’ of the US, reasserting the nation’s sovereignty, and ‘regaining’ a supposedly lost respect—all of which reflects a narrow, sovereigntist view. The principle of sovereignty has long been considered one of the central principles of international law, which posits that the authority of the state is supreme; yet states are obligated to act in specific ways under international law. This apparent contradiction has been addressed by twentieth-century positivist scholars, such as Lassa Oppenheim in his seminal work International Law: A Treatise, who argued that international law is based on the consent of states, and, therefore, is between states, rather than above states.[57] He also argued that sovereignty was divisible, and “powers connected with sovereignty need not be united in one hand.”[58] The divisibility of sovereignty has been utilised to justify the powers of international organisations in terms of delegating and pooling sovereignty.[59]
Jurist and philosopher Hans Kelsen has viewed the apparent contradiction in monist terms, arguing that there was no contradiction between sovereign powers and international law, since the sovereign state, in recognising international law, “restricts its freedom of action or competence by accepting the obligations established by general international law and by the treaties concluded by itself.”[60] For Kelsen, sovereignty did not cause any subject matter to be excluded from the ambit of international law, and there was no difference between the ratione materiae[h] competence of international law and domestic law.[61] This rendered the issue of sovereignty largely irrelevant in determining the scope of international law. However, Kelsen’s contemporary and international law professor Kevin Jon Heller criticised this conception of sovereignty, arguing that it was a fundamental presupposition of any legal system, and that the decisions of international institutions and courts attained legal character only because they were derived from state sovereignty.[62]
Yet another viewpoint has been expressed by legal luminary and civil rights activist Hersh Lauterpacht who, criticising the positivist approach to sovereignty, maintained that the idea of international law being based on the will of sovereign states was unsatisfactory. He argued that “sovereignty of states in international law is a quality conferred by international law” itself.[63] Rather than being a rigid concept, he understood sovereignty as a bundle of rights given to states by international law,[64] whose scope should be flexibly understood in light of the purpose of the law and the functions it fulfils.[65]
Debates on sovereignty and international law have continued in the twenty-first century, fuelled by factors such as globalisation, the rise of non-state private enterprises, the growing importance of digitalisation and cyberspace, and more.[66] Many, like law professor Antony Anghie, have also pointed to the colonial histories underlying the evolution of the doctrine of sovereignty and its historical use in justifying imperial conquests, and have attempted to reframe it in ways that can be used to ameliorate or prevent its use to cause further injustice to the Global South and marginalised peoples of the world.[67]
Thus, while the exact relationship between sovereignty and international law is debated among scholars from different schools of thought, most agree that sovereignty is not an impediment for international law. International law, in many ways, is a collective expression of sovereignty. As international law scholar Oona Hathaway argues, delegating sovereign authority to international organisations does not necessarily derogate states’ sovereignty; instead, it allows states to exercise their sovereignty more effectively.[68] However, this view is coming under attack from the US’s increasingly sovereigntist approach, which sees international organisations as a threat to its sovereignty and increasingly espouses a unilateral posture. The US’s National Security Strategy 2025 (NSS), for example, while calling “sovereignty and respect” one of the key principles of US foreign policy, understands it as preventing “its [sovereignty’s] erosion by transnational and international organizations ...”[69]
To be sure, international law could do with reform. There are problems of neocolonialism in modern institutional regime-complexes; the shrinking economic sovereignty of smaller states in the Global South needs to be addressed; there are issues of accountability and the rule of law in global governance. However, this kind of reform is clearly not the motivation of the Trump administration. On the contrary, the US’s angst, as US Vice-President J.D. Vance observed in a March 2025 speech, is that “the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things … Now, we assumed that other nations would always trail us in the value chain, but it turns out that as they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends.”[70]
The Trump administration’s identified problem is that the core-periphery relations between the US and the rest of the world, particularly the Global South, have started to change. The NSS 2025 articulated a ‘“Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine under which the US would be willing to take unilateral steps in the western hemisphere to ensure that it “remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains.”[71] Since then, in January 2026, the US has effected the removal and arrest of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela through a military operation, codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve. The US National Defence Strategy 2026 (NDS), published after this operation, further details this “Trump Corollary,” presenting it as a “restoration of American power and prerogatives in this hemisphere”, securing key terrain and addressing threats, even unilaterally, if allies and partners, “do not do their part.”[72]
Further, this narrow sovereigntist view is tied to American exceptionalism and does not seem to have been extended to other countries. In his second term, Trump has been quite vocal about territorial expansion plans. This includes annexing Greenland and the Panama Canal, which he has sought to justify in the name of security, and refusing to rule out coercive methods to do so.[73] It also includes repeated invitations to Canada to be included as the 51st US state.[74] The questions of self-determination and wishes of the local population seem to have become irrelevant in this consideration. While the present administration may have initially espoused reducing American wars abroad, as the airstrikes in Iran and the military intervention in Venezuela show, it is far from being non-interventionist or opposed to using force. On the contrary, after the Venezuela intervention, statements coming from the administration concerning Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Greenland have been coercive, even when they were directed to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies (in case of Denmark). Some of these recent statements potentially amount to using ‘threat of force’, which is prohibited—along with the use of force—under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.[75]
Not only do Trump’s statements potentially violate the norm of non-intervention under Article 2(7) of the UN Charter,[76] they also indicate a selective sovereigntist worldview, in which only the sovereignty of the US (and potentially that of a few other great powers whom Trump acknowledges) needs to be safeguarded; if necessary, at the expense of other sovereign states. This indicates a worldview similar to the old concept of “spheres of influence,” in which each great power is entitled to a “sphere of influence” over some smaller countries, which are “semi-suzerains” or “protectorates,” not having full sovereignty.[77] The US itself, through the Monroe Doctrine, has a long history of gunboat diplomacy, forcible territorial acquisition, and coercion, even during its ‘isolation’ period. This worldview is outdated in the post-UN charter era, which includes sovereign equality, prohibition on using force, and self-determination as central tenets. These principles have often been considered jus cogens or non-derogable peremptory norms of international law.[78]
International law is sometimes described as a discipline of crisis,[79] acquiring relevance only during crises. However, most scholars and observers agree that it is itself now facing several overlapping predicaments.[80] As legal scholar Bhupinder S. Chimni notes, various types of crises have compounded one another—episodic (like the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) and regional (challenges to an entire area of international law, like international investment law)[81]—and have exacerbated the long-standing structural crises of international law caused by issues such as climate change, the global pandemic, several refugee crises, persisting global inequality, and more.[82] All of this has brought to the foreground the root crisis of international law caused by its imperial foundations,[83] and have fundamentally challenged the normative authority of international institutions. This has contributed to a trend of weakening multilateral institutions and dejudicialisation (a process whereby states break free from international dispute-settlement mechanisms and return to domestic legal remedies) within various international legal regimes.[84]
Against this background, the Trumpian approach to international law poses various risks. The actions of the US, which potentially breach the USMCA negotiated during Trump’s first term, illustrate the aforesaid narrow sovereigntist perspective, which often ignores the foundational international legal principle of pacta sunt servanda.[i],[85] Further, as apparent from Vice-President Vance’s statement, any multilateral reforms of international trade and investment law involving the US are unlikely to further the goals of ‘fair trade’ or fulfil the aspirations of the Global South.
This Trump administration is not unique in claiming exceptionalism or applying international law selectively. Many previous US administrations have also used covert and overt military force abroad to push their interests, which was widely condemned as violations of international law at the time and contributed to several global crises. What is different with the Trumpian approach is that it seems to have entirely stopped using the vocabulary of international law, whether in the context of use of force, international trade, or other matters. In the case of its actions in Kosovo in 1999, for example, or Iraq in 2003, the US sought to legally justify them through the ‘humanitarian intervention’ doctrine, a wide reading of UN Security Council resolutions, unable or unwilling doctrine, and so on (though these were questionable and not accepted by most countries).
Similarly, the recent trade-related measures taken by the US, such as its ‘liberation day tariffs,’[j] or its interim ‘deals’ and ‘framework agreements’ with other countries, are difficult to square within the WTO framework and have further destabilised it.[86] This abandonment of international law, coupled with other global crises, could spark an unprecedented structural crisis for the international legal order, going beyond the usual problems of hypocrisy and exceptionalism. As international legal scholars note, while major violations weaken international law, it continues to have discursive and semantic authority, at least as long as the actions are sought to be explained or justified in its vocabulary.[87] This can be used by scholars and other states to demand accountability or advocate for reforms in the future. However, Trump’s complete indifference to, and abandonment of, international law erodes even this basic discursive resilience of international law. To paraphrase Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent remarks, in the face of this rupture in international law, it will be increasingly difficult for other states to participate in the ‘rituals’, the ‘illusions’, and the collective bargaining upholding the present international order.[88]
As international law professor Matias Spektor has noted, the world may in fact come to miss the hypocrisy that characterised much of the post-war international legal order, given the prospect of its complete rupture.[89] Further, Trump’s selective sovereigntist approach is likely to encourage other ambitious powers to carve out their own spheres of influence. Previous great-power interventions around the world have already weakened the basic principles of the global order, such as non-use of force, non-intervention, sovereign equality of nations, and self-determination—which are included in the UN Charter and detailed in the unanimously adopted Friendly Relations Declaration.[90] Such a development would ultimately endanger the principle of sovereign equality of nations which, for all the flaws with the idea of sovereignty, is still an important bulwark of smaller states against external intervention.
In short, the Trumpian attack on the international legal order may accelerate the process of de-legalising international relations, leading to a world where raw power, not written rules, dominates the relations between sovereign states on various topics. This would be detrimental to the interests of Global South nations.
Previous US administrations, at least since the end of the Cold War, had also referred to the concept of a ‘rules-based international order’ (RBIO). For example, Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, in his New York Times article on 2 June 2022, had expressed alarm that Russia’s military actions in Ukraine could mark the end of the RBIO. There is some debate over whether the RBIO is synonymous with international law, or whether it is a different concept that only partially overlaps with the latter. As Professor John Dugard pointed out in The Leiden Journal of International Law, the RBIO has been an alternative to international law, one which is broad, open to special rules and exceptions (in favour of the US, mostly), and which “encapsulates international law as interpreted by the United States to accord with its national interests.”[91]
While this version of the RBIO, incorporating American exceptionalism, has been seen as a threat to international law, it is still grounded in international law, and largely follows the post-war international legal consensus. But Trump has been dismissive of even this RBIO, calling it a “cloud-castle abstraction” and seeing his administration as pushing a more clear-eyed transactional foreign policy. As noted earlier, this jeopardises the legitimacy of international law to a greater extent than its selective application through RBIO by his predecessors. It causes a permanent rupture, both systemic and discursive, which will be difficult to bridge even after the end of this administration’s tenure.
Given the many already existing crises, Trump’s moves may well become the straw that broke the camel’s back, and irrevocably erode the international legal order, closing avenues for future reforms. To prevent this, other countries will need to step up and act in concert. While many states may be tempted to utilise the current chaos to promote their narrow ambitions, failure to push back against this development could potentially lead to severe destabilisation of international peace and security, and undo much of the global progress achieved in various fields.
How best can the world face the Trumpian risk to the international legal order? There are no easy answers. However, countries with a strong interest in maintaining an effective international legal order must unite and explore innovative ways to preserve the system. This should include a mix of informal and formal pathways. Informal means could consist of using soft laws, non-binding agreements, and other informal instruments. This is already becoming the norm in certain fields, such as international climate change law and governance, and includes norm diffusion through polycentric governance mechanisms involving states, non-state, and hybrid actors.[92] Even in the absence of binding commitments by their respective governments, for example, individual cities, by being part of a transnational network promoting certain rules and norms, have contributed to international cooperation on climate action.[93] While this is not a substitute for overarching major international treaties, these can work within the liminal spaces of major international agreements and institutions. Since they are informal, it would be difficult for a single government to easily dismantle them or prevent norm propagation and diffusion through them.
Formal pathways could include creating institutions and legal alternatives that bypass the US. These comprise efforts such as the European Union-led attempt to set up a multi-party interim appeal (MPIA) arrangement in the WTO—a mechanism that has resurrected the appellate mechanism—to bypass the dysfunctionality of the appellate body.[94] Another prominent example of countries managing to resurrect a legal mechanism despite the US pulling out is the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreement, which is the new name of the TPP.[95]
However, there are risks of US retaliation if it feels that these measures affect its core interests. Trump’s sharp reaction to the BRICS countries’ initial talk of creating a BRICS currency illustrates this.[96] His re-election has triggered a wave of new bilateral FTA negotiations among countries, which is likely to accelerate amid the ongoing trade wars.
In sum, nurturing and preserving an international legal order requires the backing of state power. This is precisely what the US provided for many decades after the Second World War, creating what many call a US-backed international legal order. With the US under Trump showing no interest in continuing doing so, other states will have to step up and find ways to preserve and reform the system.
Rahul Mohanty is an international law scholar, presently pursuing his PhD at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
Prabhash Ranjan is professor and vice-dean (research), Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
All views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author, and do not represent the Observer Research Foundation, either in its entirety or its officials and personnel.
[a] In his History of the Peloponnesian War, while discussing the 30-year war between Athens and Sparta for hegemony over Ancient Greece, Greek historian Thucydides maintained that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, that made war inevitable.” Modern scholars such as Graham Allison have taken to calling similar scenarios in modern times as the “Thucydides Trap.”
[b] Koskenniemi uses philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s well-known ‘duck-rabbit image’ example—how the same image can be perceived as both a duck and a rabbit—to illustrate his point about differing perspectives.
[c] Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—the grouping now has 11 members, with Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia having joined, apart from the founding five.
[d] There’s already an example of a narrow trade agreement signed between the US and Japan that arguably does not meet the requirements of GATT.
[e] Under Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the US rejoined the Paris Agreement in February 2021. Trump, after winning a second term, pulled out again.
[f] On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced the imposition of reciprocal tariffs on all countries trading with the US, accusing them of imposing very high tariffs on American imports.
[g] The US claimed that since there are multiple nuclear powers in the world today, a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia alone was meaningless, while other nuclear countries kept adding to their arsenal.
[h] The concept relates to whether a particular judicial body—court, tribunal, and others—is competent to take up a case, looking at its subject matter.
[i] Pacta sunt servanda is the cornerstone of international law, meaning ‘agreements must be kept.’
[j] On 2 April 2025, which Trump called ‘Liberation Day’, he announced a 10 percent tariff on all goods imported by the US, plus substantial additional (varying) tariffs on goods from select countries.
[1] See, generally, e.g.: Michael Byers and Georg Nolte, eds, United States Hegemony and the Foundations of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); John E. Noyes, “American Hegemony, U.S. Political Leaders, and General International Law Symposium: The New American Hegemony?” Connecticut Journal of International Law 19, no. 2 (2003): 293–314; Richard H. Steinberg and Jonathan M. Zasloff, “Power and International Law,” American Journal of International Law 100, no. 1 (2006): 64–87, https://doi.org/10.2307/3518831.
[2] For a discussion on the US president’s powers with regard to international law matters in the US domestic legal system, see Jean Galbraith, “The President’s Power to Withdraw the United States from International Agreements at Present and in the Future,” AJIL Unbound 111 (2017): 445–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2017.99; Curtis A. Bradley and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Presidential Control over International Law,” Harvard Law Review 131, no. 5 (2018): 1201–97, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44866176; Joel P. Trachtman, “Power to Terminate U.S. Trade Agreements: The Presidential Dormant Commerce Clause Versus an Historical Gloss Half Empty,” The International Lawyer 51, no. 3 (2018): 445–68, https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4568&context=til.
[3] Monika Hakimi and Jacob Katz Cogan, “The End of the U.S.-Backed International Order and the Future of International Law,” American Journal of International Law 119, no. 2 (2025): 279–290, https://doi.org/10.1017/ajil.2025.9.
[4] Catherine Amirfar and Ashika Singh, “The Trump Administration and the ‘Unmaking’ of International Agreements,” Harvard International Law Journal 59, no. 2 (2018): 443–59, https://journals.law.harvard.edu/ilj/wp-content/uploads/sites/84/HLI201_crop-1.pdf. See also Jack Goldsmith and Shannon Mercer Shannon Togawa, “International Law and Institutions in the Trump Era,” German Yearbook of International law 61, 11–39, https://doi.org/10.3790/gyil.61.1.11.
[5] See, e.g., Jason W Davidson, “The Enduring Importance of Revisionism and Status-Quo Seeking,” in The Origins of Revisionist and Status-quo Statesi, ed. Jason W. Davidson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2006); Kristina Spohr, “Status Quo and Revisionism: The Past in the Present, 1945-1989/91-2022”, in International Order Strategies: Past and Present, ed. Aaron McKeil and Stuart Austin, LSE IDEAS, 2024, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep64890.6.
[6] Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).
[7] Steve Chan, “Challenging the Liberal Order: The US Hegemon as a Revisionist Power,” International Affairs 97, no. 5 (2021): 1335–52, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab074.
[8] For more on the revisionist-status quoist debate on the US and China, see Kristen Hopewell, “Challenging the Status Quo-Revisionist Power Dichotomy: China and the United States in the Trade Regime,” Review of International Political Economy 32, no. 4 (2025): 922–44, https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2493802.
[9] Martti Koskenniemi, “Speaking the Language of International Law and Politics: Or, of Ducks, Rabbits, and Then Some,” in Mobilising International Law for ‘Global Justice’, ed. Jeff Handmaker and Karin Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). See also Steinberg and Zasloff, “Power and International Law.”
[10] Nico Krisch, “International Law in Times of Hegemony: Unequal Power and the Shaping of the International Legal Order,” European Journal of International Law 16, no. 3 (2005): 369–408, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chi123.
[11] Krisch, “International Law in Times of Hegemony.”
[12] Nico Krisch and Ezgi Yildiz, “The Many Paths of Change in International Law: A Frame,” in The Many Paths of Change in International Law, ed. Nico Krisch and Ezgi Yildiz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).
[13] Krisch and Yildiz, “The Many Paths of Change in International Law.”
[14] B.S. Chimni, “Epilogue: Fragmentary Thoughts on Informal Change,” in The Many Paths of Change in International Law.
[15] Chimni, “Epilogue.”
[16] Mark A. Pollack, “Trump as a Change Agent in International Law: Ends, Means, and Legacies,” in The Many Paths of Change in International Law.
[17] Jan Klabbers, “The Relative Autonomy of International Law or the Forgotten Politics of Interdisciplinarity,” in Law and Disciplinarity: Thinking Beyond Borders, ed. Robert J. Beck (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2013); B.S. Chimni, International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jean d’Aspremont, International Law as a Belief System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
[18] Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, “Understanding Institutional and Organizational Path Dependencies,” in The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence: Institutions and Organizations, ed. Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010).
[19] Harold Hongju Koh, The Trump Administration and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[20] Pollack, “Trump as a Change Agent in International Law.”
[21] Congyan Cai, “New Great Powers and International Law in the 21st Century,” European Journal of International Law 24, no. 3 (2013): 755–95, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/cht050.
[22] See, generally, Wang Jiangyu, “International Economic Law and Asia,” in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Simon Chesterman, Hisashi Owada and Ben Saul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Simon Chesterman, “International Law and Its Others: Comment on Aniruddha Rajput,” in The International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline? ed. Heike Krieger, Georg Nolte and Andreas Zimmermann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Aniruddha Rajput, “The BRICS as ‘Rising Powers’ and the Development of International Law,” in The International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?, ed. Heike Krieger, Georg Nolte and Andreas Zimmermann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Simon Chesterman, “Asia’s Ambivalence about International Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Simon Chesterman, Hisashi Owada and Ben Saul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Axel Michaelowa and Katharina Michealowa, “BRICS in the International Climate Negotiations,” in The Political Economy of the BRICS Countries: BRICS and the Global Economy, ed. Soo Yeon Kim (Singapore: World Scientific Connect, 2020).
[23] Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah and Jiangyu Wang, “China, India, and International Law: A Justice Based Vision Between the Romantic and Realist Perceptions,” Asian Journal of International Law 9, no. 2 (2019): 217–50, https://doi.org/10.1017/S2044251318000280.
[24] See: “Presidential Tariff Actions,” Office of the United States Trade Representative, https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/presidential-tariff-actions; “Executive Order: Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits,” The White House, April 2, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regulating-imports-with-a-reciprocal-tariff-to-rectify-trade-practices-that-contribute-to-large-and-persistent-annual-united-states-goods-trade-deficits/.
[25] “What President Trump’s ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs Mean for International (Trade) Law,” EJIL: Talk! April 30, 2025, https://www.ejiltalk.org/what-president-trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-mean-for-international-trade-law; “Trumps Ökonomische Erpressung : Wirtschaftlicher Druck Als Völkerrechtliche Intervention,” Völkerrechtsblog, May 9, 2025, https://doi.org/10.17176/20250510-004820-0.
[26] “The US–Japan Trade Deal: Narrow Scope, Wider Implications,” Kiel Institut, December 2019, https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/the-us-japan-trade-deal-narrow-scope-wider-implications-22092/. Similar apprehensions have been expressed in the context of the US-India negotiations for a trade agreement. See also “An India-U.S. Trade Agreement and the Test of WTO Laws,” The Hindu, March 11, 2025, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-india-us-trade-agreement-and-the-test-of-wto-laws/article69314587.ece.
[27] Pitman B. Potter, “The Expansion of International Jurisdiction,” Political Science Quarterly 41, no. 4 (1926): 546–66, https://doi.org/10.2307/2142229.
[28] C. Wilfred Jenks, “The Scope of International Law,” British Year Book of International Law 31 (1954):1, HeinOnline.
[29] Jonathan I. Charney, “Universal International Law,” American Journal of International Law 87, no. 4 (1993): 529–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/2203615.
[30] Humberto Cantú-Rivera, “The Expansion of International Law Beyond Treaties,” AJIL Unbound 108 (January 2014): 70–73, https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398772300001872.
[31] See, e.g., Lorenzo Casini, “The Expansion of the Material Scope of Global Law,” in Research Handbook on Global Administrative Law, ed. Sabino Cassesse (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016).
[32] As many TWAIL scholars have shown, international law continues to facilitate new forms of imperialism and hegemony. However, the Global South largely continues to use international law to resist such hegemony, even while advocating for its reform, rather than abrogation. See, e.g., Antony Anghie, “Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective,” European Journal of International Law 34, no. 1 (2023): 1, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chad005; Luis Eslava and Sundhya Pahuja, “Between Resistance and Reform: TWAIL and the Universality of International Law Special Issue: Third World Approaches to International Law,” Trade, Law and Development 3, no. 1 (2011): [xiii]–130, https://ssrn.com/abstract=1876682; Obiora Chinedu Okafor, “Newness, Imperialism, and International Legal Reform in Our Time: A Twail Perspective,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 43, nos. 1 & 2 (2005): 1 & 2, http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol43/iss1/7.
[33] Robert Howse and Ruti Teitel, “Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Really Matters,” Global Policy 1, no. 127 (2010), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00035.x; Christine Chinkin and Mary Kaldor, “The Relevance of International Law,” in International Law and New Wars, ed. Christine Chinkin and Mary Kaldor (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
[34] Onuma Yasuaki, “International Law in and with International Politics: The Functions of International Law in International Society,” European Journal of International Law 14, no. 1 (2003): 105–39, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/14.1.105.
[35] See, generally, Michelle Getchell, “The United Nations and the United States,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jane Dailey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Natsu Taylor Saito, Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law (New York: NYU Press, 2010); Harold K. Jacobson, ‘Structuring the Global System: American Contributions to International Organization’ The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 428 (1976): 77-90; Raymond Vernon, “The U.S. Government at Bretton Woods and After,” in The Bretton Woods-GATT System, ed. Orin Kirshner (New York: Routledge, 1996); G. John Ikenberry, “The Political Origins of Bretton Woods,” in A Retrospective on the Bretton Woods System, ed. Michael D. Bordo and Barry Eichengreen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[36] See, generally, Saito, Meeting the Enemy.
[37] “Why Does Trump Threaten America’s Allies? Hint: It Starts in 1919,” New York Times, February 2, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/trump-panama-greenland-foreign-policy.html; “Trump’s Distorted View of Sovereignty and American Exceptionalism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 30, 2025, https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/01/trump-sovereignty-american-exceptionalism?lang=en; Oona Hathaway, “International Delegation and State Sovereignty,” Law and Contemporary Problems 71, no. 1 (2008): 115–50, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol71/iss1/6.
[38] Peter J. Spiro, “The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and Its False Prophets,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 6 (2000): 9–15, https://doi.org/10.2307/20049963; Hathaway, “International Delegation and State Sovereignty.”
[39] “Trump’s Bilateralism and US Power in East Asia,” The Diplomat, August 9, 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/trumps-bilateralism-and-us-power-in-east-asia/; “Trump’s Troubling Bilateralism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 20, 2017, https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2017/01/trumps-troubling-bilateralism?lang=en.
[40] “Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord,” The White House, June 1, 2017, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord.
[41] “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” The White House, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/putting-america-first-in-international-environmental-agreements/; “Trump Orders a U.S. Exit From the World’s Main Climate Pact,” New York Times, January 20, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/climate/trump-paris-agreement-climate.html.
[42] See “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares National Emergency to Increase our Competitive Edge, Protect our Sovereignty, and Strengthen our National and Economic Security,” The White House, April 2, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-national-emergency-to-increase-our-competitive-edge-protect-our-sovereignty-and-strengthen-our-national-and-economic-security/.
[43] “Why did Trump end the WTO’s Appellate Body? Tariffs,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, March 4, 2025, https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/2020/why-did-trump-end-wtos-appellate-body-tariffs.
[44] “US Pauses Financial Contributions to WTO, Trade Sources Say,” Reuters, March 28, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us-suspends-financial-contributions-wto-trade-sources-say-2025-03-27.
[45] “The United States Officially Withdraws from the Trans-Pacific Partnership” USTR, January 30, 2017, https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2017/january/US-Withdraws-From-TPP.
[46] “What’s Next for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp.
[47] “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” USTR, July 1, 2020, https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement.
[48] “Trump Whipsaws on Tariffs, Giving Mexico and Canada Reprieve,” New York Times, March 6, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/trump-mexico-tariffs-suspended.html.
[49] “U.S. Withdraws From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,” US Department of Defense, August 2, 2019, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/article/1924779/us-withdraws-from-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty/.
[50] “U.S. Withdraws From 1955 Treaty Normalizing Relations With Iran,” New York Times, October 3, 2018, at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/world/middleeast/us-withdraws-treaty-iran.html.
[51] “DOD Statement on Open Skies Treaty Withdrawal,” US Department of Defense, May 21, 2020, https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2195239/dod-statement-on-open-skies-treaty-withdrawal/.
[52] “Trump Administration Announces Withdrawal from Four International Agreements,” American Journal of International Law 113, no. 1 (2019): 131–41, https://doi.org/10.1017/ajil.2018.115.
[53] “Withdrawing the United States from The World Health Organization,” The White House, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-the-worldhealth-organization/.
[54] “Withdrawing the United States from and Ending Funding To Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support To All International Organizations,” The White House, archived February 4, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-and-ending-funding-to-certain-united-nations-organizations-and-reviewing-united-states-support-to-all-international-organizations/.
[55] “Presidential Memoranda Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States,” The White House, January 7, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/.
[56] “Statement to the Conference on Disarmament,” US Department of State, February 6, 2026, https://www.state.gov/releases/2026/02/statement-to-the-conference-on-disarmament.
[57] Lassa Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise: Vol. 1 (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1905), p. 20.
[58] Oppenheim, International Law, 111.
[59] David A. Lake, “Delegating Divisible Sovereignty: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” The Review of International Organizations 2, no. 3 (2007): 219–37, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-007-9012-3.
[60] Hans Kelsen, “Sovereignty and International Law,” Georgetown Law Journal 48, no. 4 (1959): 627–40.
[61] Kelsen, “Sovereignty and International Law”; François Rigaux, “Hans Kelsen on International Law,” European Journal of International Law 9, no. 2 (1998): 325–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/9.2.325.
[62] Hermann Heller, “The Sovereignty of the State and the Problem of International Law,” in Sovereignty: A Contribution to the Theory of Public and International Law, ed. Hermann Heller and David Dyzenhaus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
[63] Hersh Lauterpacht, The Function of Law in the International Community (Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 104; Hersh Lauterpacht, “The ‘Specific’ Character of International Law and the Rule of Law in International Society” in The Function of Law in the International Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), pp. 407–446.
[64] Hersch Lauterpacht, The Development of International Law by the International Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 324–325.
[65] Roman Kwiecień, “Sir Hersch Lauterpacht’s Idea of State Sovereignty ‐ Is It Still Alive?,” International Community Law Review 13, nos. 1–2 (2011): 23–41, https://doi.org/10.1163/187197311X552901.
[66] Jack Goldsmith, “Sovereignty, International Relations Theory, and International Law Book Review,” Stanford Law Review 52, no. 4 (1999): 959–986, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229436; Gerard Kreijen et al., eds, State, Sovereignty, and International Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Stephen D. Krasner, “The Hole in the Whole: Sovereignty, Shared Sovereignty, and International Law Diversity or Cacophony: New Sources of Norms in International Law Symposium,” Michigan Journal of International Law 25, no. 4 (2003):1075–1101, https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol25/iss4/15; Neil Walker, ed., Relocating Sovereignty (Routledge, 2006); Jens Bartelson, “The Concept of Sovereignty,” European Journal of International Law 17, no. 2 (2006): 463–474, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chl006.
[67] Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005); see also B.S. Chimni, “The International Law of Jurisdiction: A TWAIL Perspective,” Leiden Journal of International Law 35, no. 1 (2022):29–54, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156521000534; Antony Anghie, “Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective,” European Journal of International Law 34, no. 1 (2023):7–112, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chad005.
[68] Hathaway, “International Delegation and State Sovereignty.”
[69] “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” The White House, November 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf.
[70] “Remarks by Vice President Vance at American Dynamism Summit,” The White House, March 18, 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/20250402220308/https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/03/remarks-by-vice-president-vance-at-american-dynamism-summit/.
[71] NSS 2025, p. 5.
[72] “National Defense Strategy 2026,” Department of War, January 23, 2026, https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/2026-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY.PDF
[73] “Coercion without Invasion: Trump, Greenland, and the Erosion of International Law,” Centre for International Law, May 16, 2025, https://cil.nus.edu.sg/blogs/coercion-without-invasion-trump-greenland-and-the-erosion-of-international-law/; “Trump Declines to Rule out ‘Military or Economic’ Force to Expand U.S.,” The Washington Post, January 7, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/07/trump-expansion-greenland-gulf-of-mexico/.
[74] “How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious,” New York Times, March 7, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/world/canada/trump-trudeau-canada-51st-state.html; “Even on Canada’s Election Day, Trump Again Insists Country Should Join U.S.,” New York Times, April 28, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/world/canada/trump-51-state.html.
[75] “The Prohibitions of Threat of Force Revisited: Greenland, Credibility and International Law,” EJIL: Talk! January 26, 2026, https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-prohibitions-of-threat-of-force-revisited-greenland-credibility-and-international-law/.
[76] “Trump’s Coercion of America’s Allies and the Prohibition of Intervention,” EJIL: Talk! January 13, 2025, https://www.ejiltalk.org/trumps-coercion-of-americas-allies-and-the-prohibition-of-intervention/.
[77] Hannis Taylor, “Spheres of Influence and Protectorates,” American Law Review 41 (1907): 92; Geddes W. Rutherford, “Spheres of Influence: An Aspect of Semi-Suzerainty,” American Journal of International Law 20, no. 2 (1926): 300–325, https://doi.org/10.2307/2188919.
[78] Dire Tladi, ed., Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens) (Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2021).
[79] See Hilary Charlesworth, “International Law: A Discipline of Crisis,” The Modern Law Review 65, no. 3 (2002): 377–392, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00385.
[80] Makane Moïse Mbengue and Jean D’Aspremont, ed., Crisis Narratives in International Law (Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2021).
[81] For more on the crisis in international investment law, see Valentina Vadi, “Crisis, Continuity, and Change in International Investment Law and Arbitration,” Michigan Journal of International Law 42, no. 2 (2021): 321–368, https://doi.org/10.36642/mjil.42.2.crisis.
[82] B.S. Chimni, “Crisis and International Law: A Third World Approaches to International Law Perspective,” in Crisis Narratives in International Law, ed. Makane Moïse Mbengue and Jean D’Aspremont (Brill Nijhoff, 2021).
[83] Chimni, “Crisis and International Law.”
[84] For more on this, see Daniel Abebe and Tom Ginsburg, “The Dejudicialization of International Politics?” International Studies Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2019): 521—530, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqz032.
[85] See generally, I.I. Lukashuk, “The Principle Pacta Sunt Servanda and the Nature of Obligation Under International Law,” American Journal of International Law 83, no. 3 (1989): 513–18, https://doi.org/10.2307/2203309; “International Law Under Pressure,” Verfassungsblog, March 24, 2025, https://doi.org/10.59704/5b33075d80d6253e; “Sovereignty on Steroids: International Institutions and the Trump Administration’s ‘Ideology of Patriotism,’” Lawfare, January 18, 2023, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sovereignty-steroids-international-institutions-and-trump-administrations-ideology-patriotism.
[86] “The WTO Is on the Wrong Side of the Bargain in the Trump Administration ‘Deals’,” Oxford Law Pro, 18 December 2025, https://academic.oup.com/info-oxford-law-pro/pages/wto-trump-administration-deals; “India-US Trade Deal and International Law,” Hindustan Times, 8 February 2026, https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/indiaus-trade-deal-and-international-law-101770558383380.html.
[87] “On Second Chances: Discursive Maintenance of International Law Amidst Ukraine and Gaza,” Opinio Juris, 20 August 2025, https://opiniojuris.org/2025/08/20/on-second-chances-discursive-maintenance-of-international-law-amidst-ukraine-and-gaza/.
[88] Mark Carney, “Speech at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026”,
World Economic Forum, January 20, 2026, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/.
[89] “The World Will Come to Miss Western Hypocrisy,” Foreign Affairs, January 29, 2026, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/world-will-come-miss-western-hypocrisy.
[90] “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,” UN General Assembly, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/202170.
[91] John Dugard, “The Choice Before Us: International Law or a ‘Rules-based International Order’”, Leiden Journal of International Law 36, no. 2 (2023): 223–232, 226, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156523000043.
[92] Jale Tosun, “Diffusion: An Outcome of and an Opportunity for Polycentric Activity?,” in Governing Climate Change: Polycentricity in Action?, ed. Andrew Jordan et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Andrew Jordan and Huitema Dave, “Polycentric Governance,” in Routledge Handbook of Environmental Policy, ed. Helge Jörgens, Christoph Knill and Yves Steinebach (New York: Routledge, 2023).
[93] V. Castán Broto. and H. Bulkeley, “A Survey of Urban Climate Change Experiments in 100 Cities,” Global Environmental Change 23, no. 1 (2013): 92–102, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.07.005.
[94] For more on the MPIA mechanism in the WTO, see Joost Pauwelyn, “The WTO’s Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA): What's New?” World Trade Review 22, no. 5 (2023): 693–701, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474745623000204.
[95] Xianbai Ji and Pradumna B. Rana, “A Deal that Does Not Die: The United States and the Rise, Fall and Future of the (CP)TPP,” Pacific Focus 34, (2019): 230–255, https://doi.org/10.1111/pafo.12143.
[96] “Trump Repeats Tariffs Threat to Dissuade BRICS Nations from Replacing US Dollar,” Reuters, January 31, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trump-repeats-tariffs-threat-dissuade-brics-nations-replacing-us-dollar-2025-01-31/.
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Rahul Mohanty is an international law scholar, presently pursuing his PhD at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. ...
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Prabhash Ranjan is Professor and Vice Dean (Continuing Education) at Jindal Global Law School O P Jindal Global University Sonipat. ([email protected]) Views are personal.
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