Teetering on the edge of an age of uncertainty, we face our biggest stress test. Can a very troubled world order survive a disruptive leader?

25 February 2025 – – Over the weekend my team published two articles demonstrating America’s inexorable march to authoritarianism. One addresses Musk and his DOGE crew who are dismantling the U.S. government, and the other addresses Trump’s purge of the U.S. military – and everything else. If you have not read it, please do by clicking here.

Over the weekend I found another very good piece by Matt Bai entitled “The blinding contempt of the DOGE bros“. It is an inside story of Elon Musk’s takeover. It is behind The Washington Post paywall so I put it up on my Slideshare which you can read by clicking here.

And I agree with my team’s summation: the famous but misnamed *checks and balance* against such Presidential power are gone. The U.S. Congress (completely captured by MAGA) has capitulated, and the other *check* – the U.S. *justice* system – is doing no better. It is thumbing through the rulebook of the monastery – while in front of them a mafia don has set the monastery on fire. The U.S. legal system/justice system is rapidly disintegrating – the subject of my next long post, due out later this week.

Good historians are always skittish about predicting the future, and not only because there are too many variables and possibilities. It is also not always easy to grasp the significance of events when you are in the middle of them. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, people grasped at once that a new era had started. But they were not sure what “new era” was starting.

Just as few Europeans foresaw that the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 would precipitate a terrifying, continent-spanning war in which more than 16 million people would be killed.

Or to be more prosaic, even tech experts did not understand the significance of the iPhone when Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, unveiled it back in 2007.

But Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election last November was a bit different. He had been broadcasting for years exactly what he would do if re-elected. And now, after only 4 weeks of his reign (has been only 4 weeks??!!) he is doing everything he said he’d do – and more.

If you are in the technology business, or have a heavy interest in the area, you know Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” that dictate a robot may not injure a human being.

But it is Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction trilogy, “The Foundation“, published just at the end of World War II, that is the true telling here.

In it, humanity’s future has been largely tamed by a brilliant mathematician who uses statistical laws to control human behavior and protect against catastrophic events, ensuring what is supposed to be benevolent and stable rule for centuries. But these assumptions are shattered by the appearance of the Mule, a mutant with extraordinary powers and millions of devoted followers, who threatens to overturn the order and bring back unpredictability.

Donald Trump is the Mule of our times. He, too, likes to see himself as the destroyer of conventions and rules and the breaker of institutions. And he, too, rose to power on the back of a personal mass following, and he is changing the course of events and creating a different United States in a very different world.

Margaret MacMillan notes Asimov’s Foundation in a recent essay. She wrote the now classic book “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914”. In that essay she wrote:

The presidential contest went off calmly, much to the relief of many. But Trump and his supporters (especially Elon Musk), coupled with an obedient Congress, along with a pliant Supreme Court, is bringing major changes to the way the United States is governed – and basically destroying the rule of law. He is doing away with or gutting independent government agencies he doesn’t like, turning others into his own fiefdoms, politicizing the military and justice system, decimating all of America’s relationships with its allies – and partnering with America’s adversaries. He sees no value or benefit to the United States in international law, rules, or institutions such as the United Nations (this morning a memo leaked that Trump plans to leave the UN), the World Trade Organization, or the World Health Organization, and he denigrates even bedrock U.S. alliances such as NATO.

As she notes, Asimov was a scientist, but he was dealing with one of the central questions about individuals’ capacity to change the course of history – specifically those who have the power and the drive to shatter an existing order.

But he also raised a related question that we are all now addressing: was the old order doomed anyway, and if so, are such individuals merely agents of the external forces that shaped them?

MacMillan noted: 

It is unlikely that the young Napoleon Bonaparte, from a modest background, would have been able to rise to power without the upheavals of the French Revolution of 1789. Russian President Vladimir Putin might not have been able to seize the levers of power had the nascent political system of post-Soviet Russia been more established. Like Chinese President Xi Jinping, he has built a highly personal rule, reshaping his powerful country around himself and bringing about major shifts in the global order.

She continued later on: 

As observers try to gauge what the second Trump presidency will mean for the United States and the world, a more important question may be how well American democracy, and the international order, can withstand the stress. In the face of the Great Depression, the democratic systems of the United Kingdom and the United States proved resilient, but those of Germany and Japan collapsed, and the world descended into the worst military conflict of the modern era. In the United States today, the roots of its democracy run deep, and the dispersal of power between the federal government and the states limits what any one administration can do. 

But the experience of the past is a reminder that the strength of institutions can be very hard to assess before they are directly challenged. The second Trump presidency is making that direct challenge and the institutions are not holding up.

That holds true for the international order, as well. Although today’s order appeared to be stronger and more resilient than its 1930s counterpart, in recent years, norms that were long considered inviolable have been brutally flouted. As of now, it is very unclear whether Trump’s massive changes to usher in a new age can ever be stopped by existing laws and structures of government, which seem to fall every day. And with zero political opposition at home, or by others abroad (the European Union is a feather battling an anvil). Because what ultimately happens depends as much on the balance of forces around him as on his own use of power.

Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether leaders shape or are shaped by larger forces. Political scientists are generally wary of studying individual actors, preferring to focus on what can be counted and aggregated. Yet historians are constantly aware of the challenge of finding the right balance between individuals and the social and political forces around them. Of course, all leaders are products of their times, whether in their ideas and values or in their assumptions about how the world works.

Yet those who possess exceptional power (as Trump has now) – whether political, ideological, or financial – can use it to take their societies and sometimes larger parts of humanity down one road rather than another. In her most recent book “War: How Conflict Shaped Us”, MacMillan notes: 

Experiences leaders bring with them will affect the ways in which they look at the world and the decisions they make. Putin was humiliated at the end of the Cold War when, as a young intelligence officer in East Germany, he went from being a representative of the Soviet empire to someone who barely had enough to live on. He witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union, as its subject states such as Ukraine seized the opportunity for independence – traumatic events that doubtless fed his obsession with gaining back what he sees as lost Russian territory and making Russia great again.

Personality counts, too. With Putin, one cannot ignore his determination and ruthlessness and his belief that he is a direct heir to past Russian and Soviet leaders such as Peter the Great and Stalin, who built and maintained a huge empire and made Russia respected and feared by its neighbors.

That is why in our present day, people do matter. As I noted in a long piece last week, we are in a new era where by and large international relations are not going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions. They’re going to be determined by strong men and deals. We are not going back to the world we had had before. And this is the natural arc of human history. As I have noted before, in that very short history of mankind on this planet, every civilization reaches the point where it must adapt – or die. As will ours.

Look at your history. Subtract certain people from the violent history of the 20th century, and it is not possible to fully explain what happened. If Hitler had been killed in the trenches in World War I, it is unlikely that another German nationalist, with the same combination of ideology and a conviction that he was right, would have had a similar impact. If Winston Churchill had been killed when a car knocked him down in New York City in 1931, it is doubtful that anyone else who might have been in power in London in 1940 would have had the determination to fight on after the fall of France; certainly, it is hard to imagine Neville Chamberlain, who was succeeded by Churchill as prime minister in May of that year, or Chamberlain’s otherwise likely successor, Lord Halifax, doing so. Whereas Stalin and Mao were indifferent to the hideous losses they inflicted on their peoples in their attempts to change the very nature of their societies, their colleagues, who were also ideologues, nevertheless had qualms about the costs. As Stephen Kotkin observed (in his monumental biography of Stalin) of the collective farms in the Soviet Union, “If Stalin had died, the likelihood of forced wholesale collectivization—the only kind—would have been near zero”.

In the case of Trump, he has announced plans to deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants (slowly underway), he has emasculate the U.S. civil service, imposed sky-high tariffs (which bounce back-and-forth because they are mere weapons for other goals), and he has alienated or abandoned American allies – all unabated. His threats and provocations and taunts to his enemies (and “friends”) are really a very coherent vision to creating a transformed United States into a world divided into transactional power blocks. What is clear is that his attack on the status quo resonates with a large number of Americans and his many supporters elsewhere. Whether or not Trump intends it, his legacy may well be a lasting change in the way the world works.

MacMillan has noted that to accept that certain kinds of leaders can divert the course of history does not mean that they do so on their own; they ride the changing currents in societies. Great political and social changes often come as institutions are losing authority because people simply stop believing in their legitimacy. She mentions that at the start of the 16th century, for example, the Catholic Church was a rich and powerful institution that seemed set to dominate Christianity for centuries to come. In practice, however, it was losing its monopoly on learning, thanks to the printing press and the spread of literacy, along with its moral authority, as a result of growing and visible corruption within its hierarchy. When Martin Luther wrote his famous theses in 1517 to condemn the Church’s lucrative practice of selling indulgences, he set in motion the movement that, over the next few decades, transformed the political structures of Europe.

Or take the leaders of the French Revolution. They faced a failing regime that was burdened by debt and increasingly unpopular—and not just with those who suffered from its inequalities but also among the aristocrats who had benefited from it. In a similar way, even most of those who worked for the Soviet regime had stopped believing in Marxism by the 1980s. Predicting the timing of the end, however, was another matter.

In the United States, Trump’s appeal suggests that this is not just politics as usual but a result of a widespread disillusionment with existing institutions. Under President Joe Biden, the economy was doing well, unemployment was down, and the government was making progress on controlling the southern border – but the perceptions of many voters were far different. More important, in much of the country, the federal government was seen as ineffective and corrupt, or even tyrannical. Democracies depend on trust, and that was eroding. Trump was adept at giving voice to Americans’ concerns and resentments.

And that is Trump’s strength: building on discontent in troubled times to gain power takes a certain sort of genius and a willingness to ignore conventional wisdom and customs. It is repeated in history:

• As the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin was lucky in his times, but he also made his own luck. With his simple but brilliant slogan of “Peace, Bread, Land” and his single-minded fixation on gaining power, his Bolshevik Party was able to win support in key areas of the country. In November 1917, it seized power, with long-lasting consequences for what became the Soviet Union and for the world.

• Hitler managed to persuade enough influential Germans—including businesspeople, top generals, and those close to the German president and war hero Paul von Hindenburg—that he should be made chancellor in January 1933. A month later, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler was given emergency powers. He rapidly finished off what was left of the Weimar Republic and, as did Napoleon, Lenin, and Lenin’s successor, Stalin, created a new regime with new institutions, new values, and new winners and losers.

The pressing question today is whether Trump will observe any boundaries at home and abroad or, confident in his own power, just disregard them.

Right now he seems to be screaming “All is permitted”.

The international order had appeared stronger and more resilient. That is now gone. In fact, much of that order began to disappear with the end of the Cold War. Crucially, a post-1945 unspoken agreement that the seizure of territory by force anywhere in the world was not the basis for sovereignty lasted until the early twenty-first century. But that understanding has now been breached, with the seizure by Russia of parts of Ukraine and the recognition by the U.S. government of Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the Golan Heights taken from Syria. As in domestic politics, leaders who break the rules and pay no price for doing so can cause others to attempt the same. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s illiberal democracy in Hungary has inspired many Trump supporters in the United States, including the political strategist Steve Bannon and Elon Musk. Putin’s unprovoked attacks on a sovereign neighbor have provided a precedent – especially if they succeed in winning him territory – for other leaders such as Xi, who has long expressed the goal of bringing Taiwan back under China’s rule. Western intelligence analysts are convinced China will seize Taiwan within 24 months. Norms that have held for decades are crumbling.

I get it. Americans are said to be tired of being the world’s policeman, and who can blame them. But the prospect of an isolationist policy under Trump, even the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from NATO and/or the UN, the further weakening of the Western alliance, confrontation with China, and a tariff war with much of the world, is unlikely to make the United States, or other countries, safer. Moreover, the continued rise of right-wing nationalist movements in Europe may well lead to the further erosion of support for an international order that the United States has often benefited from.

The world has no clue how to deal with a leader who is proving to be more erratic and more inclined to ignore the rules than he was in his first term. In international relations, the danger that mistakes and misunderstandings can lead to confrontations, as they did in 1914, is always present, but today that risk appears to be growing. Even as the U.S. election was unfolding, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tested a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile and drew closer to Putin, internationalizing the conflict in Ukraine by providing Russia with North Korean troops.

In Asimov’s trilogy, the Mule is eventually brought under control, stripped of his powers, and sent back to his own minor planet with the galactic order restored. But of course, that is all science fiction.