Year XXXVIII, Number 2, July 2025

Domènec Ruiz Devesa
President, Union of European Federalists. Former Member of the European Parliament and former Vice-Chair, Committee on Constitutional Affairs

Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine and the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 have put an end to the international order based on multilateralism and open economic relations created in 1945 and strengthened in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The end of the Cold War meant the “victory” of liberal democracy and free markets in the ideological competition, but also the integration of the former Soviet bloc and China in the capitalist global economy, and in the international financial institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation).

A key feature of the Bretton Woods system has remained since its inception: the role of the dollar as the informal international reserve currency. This has allowed the US to get indebted in its own, universally accepted, currency, and therefore at cheaper rates, attract foreign capital, and to develop the largest consumer economy in the world. At the same time, the strong dollar has over time damaged its manufacturing base and exports.

The 1989 democratic revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant in primis the spatial expansion of the multilateral order to the extent that Communist world was not part of some of its institutions, and its deepening, since the end of the bipolar competition paved for a more cooperative approach with a renewed protagonism of the United Nations and its Security Council.

In fact, the 1945/1989 order started to (progressively) unravel with the end of the Cold War since it included, alongside the democratic and multilateral pillars, two unsustainable elements: overreliance in the US as guarantor of the international system and an unfettered financial and economic globalisation that increased social inequalities, migration flows to the First World, and ecological destruction.

A bipolar or multipolar international order is going to be based in balance of power dynamics. Two or more imperial or continental powers compete to maximize their perceived interests while minimizing the financial resources needed to this end. It is therefore inherently unstable, characterized by conflict and attempts at domination. It could lead to open wars with limiting factors such as nuclear´s “equilibrium terror”.

The liberal and democratic character of some of these powers can nuance their raw pursue of national interest, with some consideration for International Law and international organisations, including illegal use of force, Human Rights, and so on. In the end, international norms and institutions will be deployed by the key players to the extent that they perceive them as tools to advance their national interests. This is true also in regard to the hegemonic power in a unipolar international order.

In the unipolar order the hegemonic power must fulfil certain functions such as defending the international norms, and acting as global police, as far as they conform to their interests and, if it is a democratic power, values. The hegemon cannot possibly prioritise the interest of the international community over its own perceived national interest. Equally, the economic cost of underpinning the international order must be consistent with a profitable balance sheet. Payments to international organisations and financing of military bases and deployments around the world are to be factored in in it.

In a unipolar world, one must hope that the imperial power is a liberal-democratic one and that most of the time the two interests will overlap. Still, this order is more stable than the others as far as no competitors or rivals emerge over time, and the imperial power acts as a benevolent hegemon because of its democratic nature and/or the benefits derived from the international order that it is underpinning.

After 1989 the US has been the hegemonic power of the international system. The 1990s were the apex of the unipolar moment. It was the unrivalled military and economic power. The Clinton administration considered that cooperation with the traditional allies and the former USSR, democratisation of Central and Eastern Europe, further European integration (Maastricht Treaty), trade liberalisation, and multilateralism were both good for the world and the US. These were the years of the creation of the NATO-Russia Council and US humanitarian interventions in different continents. The expansion of NATO to the East will become over time a contentious issue with the Russian Federation, but particularly after Putin´s accession to power.

In fact, the unravelling of the post-Cold War era had to do more with the gradual integration of China in the world economy, and the destruction of entire industrial areas in the US and the West, and the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000. The Bush administration was not particularly concerned about the flaws of unfettered globalisation, which were not so evident in the early 2000s.

It considered though that the US power, inherently good, should not be constrained by international law (rejection of the International Criminal Court), disarmament treaties (withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia), or its traditional allies (invasion of Iraq). The 9-11 terrorist attacks are typically considered as the key moment of the “unilateral” US foreign policy, but the ICC and ABM episodes took place before the collapse of the Twin Towers, the second one probably greatly eroding Putin´s trust in the Americans. Indeed, the Al-Qaeda attacks ushered a global coalition in support of the US and its intervention in Afghanistan. The illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq, inspired by a mix of democratic imperialism and a desire to control natural resources, constituted on the other hand a major disturbance of the international order, with the EU divided, Russia and China opposed to it, and the credibility of the UN and international law greatly damaged.

In 2009 the Obama administration had to deal with the financial collapse of the West, due to excessive private debt and banking deregulation, and continued and costly military interventions in Afghanistan in Iraq. By then the role of China in the global economy was clear. It had become the “factory of the world”, running a huge trade surplus with the US. The excess savings were in turn channelled in US debt, fuelling its private consumption and government deficits. President Obama attempted to limit America´s economic dependence from China and particularly to manage its rise as a geopolitical power, while recommitting the US to the rules-based order after the Bush years. In the meantime, Russia had become a fully-fledged revisionist power, with its opposition to NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, and its aggression to the second one in 2014.

Therefore, already in the first decade of the XXI Century one of the conditions needed for the stability of the unipolar order was already cracking: the benevolent character of the hegemon and its commitment to multilateralism (Bush years) and, in the second, it was the turn of the lack of geopolitical rivals willing to challenge the statu quo (Russia and China, in cooperation with Iran, North Korea, etcetera).

Already episodes such as Brexit and the election of Trump, both in 2016 reflected the deep malaise across the West with the global economic system: Asia as the industrial powerhouse and the US as consumer of last resort. The Euro-Atlantic area had become (mostly) a services-based economy fuelled by cheap migrant labour. Thus, the politics of class and the politics of identity mixed to power a strong right-wing populism current in US and Europe.

Trump shared (and shares) with Bush its belief in the unconstrained use of American´s imperial power, even if he is considerably more willing to follow through in practice (the threats over Greenland and Canada are cases in point). For Bush, international organisations could be a political or legal constrain; for Trump they are also seen as a financial burden.

Trump disagreed with Bush on his democratic imperialism and willingness to undertake military interventions. In addition, Trump is attempting to alter the internal constitutional order, something Bush did not dream of doing. Finally, Trump´s understanding of the flawed international economic order appears more profound though than that of his predecessors, even if his team is not always consistent about policy. He is determined to reduce the US current account deficit, and some of his advisers believe that the dollar´s role as de facto reserve currency is not in the US interest (Miran) while others would like to keep it and that of the US debt as the paramount safe asset (Bessent). The Trump team is united in wanting to reduce the financial burden of the US security guarantee to Europe, to redeploy resources in the Asia- Pacific against China.

The bottom line is that in 2025 the US is a non-benevolent hegemon that does not only consider that it should not be bound by international norms (the novelty here is the sheer scale of its disregard vis-à-vis previous Republican presidencies) but that also believes that the current global order is not benefitting it and could be ready to agree to divide the planet in spheres of influence with its challengers, Russia and China, in this second case provided that the trade deficit question is properly addressed. The fate of Ukraine and Europe are at best a minor consideration.

To conclude, the Trump example shows in the clearest fashion since 1989 that a peaceful and stable international order cannot be built around neither an imperial hegemon nor a competition of imperial powers. In the short term, the EU´s urgency and that of other nations and regional blocs of the Global South is to forge a new alliance to reject the Trump- Putin-Jinping order and to preserve as much as possible the UN system and the international order.

However, a larger point emerges from this analysis and the traditional federalist thinking: the world remains in a state of nature, with nation-states competing for power and influence, event if nuanced by the myriads of international organisations and regimes that have emerged. We know though that international treaties can be easily denounced or disrespected, and that the US, Russia, and China do not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The civil society and political work towards a global federation, as an evolution of the United Nations, is now more apparent and necessary than ever.

The EU should complete its federalisation and make the establishment of a supranational global governance a fundamental part of its foreign policy: demanding the amendment of the UN Charter, the creation of the UN Parliamentary Assembly, and the reform of the Security Council. In parallel, Mercosur, African Union, and ASEAN should become politically integrated to rebalance the international order alongside the EU, vis-à-vis the US, China, and Russia. This coalition of regional blocs should propose the creation of a global currency (the Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund) to be used for international trade transactions. All national and regional currencies will have a fixed exchange rate with the global currency, thus ensuring fair and balanced trade and erasing the US dollar “exorbitant burden”. The creation of a new trade and monetary system is crucial to correct the social and economic inequalities created by unfettered globalisation. A new global social and ecologic contract must underpin the federalisation of global political governance.