Year XXXIX, Number 1, March 2026

Lucio Levi

Honorary editor of the Federalist Debate and former President of UEF-Italy. Professor emeritus of political science at the University of Turin.

Within the space of a single week, Trump arrested the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and transferred them to U.S. prisons pending trial on charges of drug trafficking. Trump embodies a turning point in international relations. The United States, which once represented the cradle of constitutionalism and democracy, has been transformed into a kind of world police force, acting as an absolute sovereign outside any rule, constraint, or control. The international order created after the Second World War is dead, and the United States has become the main enemy of international law. “I do not need international law,” he stated; “my morality, my mind are the only things that can stop me.”

To underline the relevance of this choice, Trump decided to withdraw the United States from 66 international organizations, 31 of which belong to the United Nations system. In reality, what interests Trump is not so much the fight against drug trafficking and illegal immigration, as he often claims in public statements, but above all access to oil – of which Venezuela possesses the largest reserves in the world – and real estate investments. Democracy is excluded from his political agenda. Other priorities prevail. This is confirmed by the fact that Maduro’s liberticidal regime is kept in power. For some time, the United States has built the largest prison system in the world. The killing of people of color by the police has become increasingly frequent. The government attacks universities, reduces funding for research, and empties cultural institutions of their substance.

The fact that a genocide, even if carried out through different methods and on a different scale, is today perpetrated by those who were once victims, with the consent, acquiescence, or indifference of a large part of the West, opens deeply disturbing perspectives on the nature of the new world that awaits us. The entire framework of the international order, which states had constructed to guarantee peaceful coexistence and recent statements by President Trump regarding Canada, Panama, and Greenland have stirred significant media attention and prompted discussions about what could be considered a twenty-first-century Monroe Doctrine. In the press conference on January 7th , Trump expressed his intention to annex Canada, purchase Greenland, reassert direct control over the Panama Canal, and counter Iran’s nuclear program. Donald Trump justified the desire to annex these territories on the grounds of national security, primarily determined by geography and the future strategic needs of the United States. Canada and Greenland are considered essential for control over the Arctic Sea, the Panama Canal for commercial flows between the Atlantic and Pacific, and Iran for neutralizing its threat in relation to a potential nuclear attack.

This situation calls upon the European Union to assume its responsibilities in shaping a new international order. Andrius Kubilius, the new European Commissioner for Defence and Space as of December 1, 2024, of Lithuanian nationality, has described Europe as “a sleeping giant.” To underscore the shift he intends to bring to the European unification process, for the first time in the history of the European Commission, a position exclusively dedicated to the defence sector has been established. Among the main space-related programs, Galileo, for satellite positioning, and Copernicus, for monitoring climate change, are noteworthy, highlighting the EU’s growing commitment to achieving a higher degree of strategic autonomy.

In line with this approach was the address by Canadian Prime Minister Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he called upon middle powers to form coalitions: “Our view,” Carney stated, “is that middle powers must act together because if we are not at the negotiating table, we will end up on the menu. But I would also say that great powers can, for now, afford to act alone. They possess the market size, military capacity, and necessary power to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. Yet when we negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from a position of weakness. We accept what is offered to us. We compete among ourselves to be the most accommodating.”

This is not sovereignty. It is the exercise of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world defined by rivalry among great powers, middle-ranking countries face a choice: to compete among themselves for favors or to unite in order to create a third path with real impact. We should not allow the rise of great power to prevent us from seeing that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if