Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 represents a transition from the post-Cold War consensus of globalisation and unfettered supranationalism towards a new age of what we might call sovereign internationalism.

Throughout the Cold War, the US underwrote a “liberal international order”. This order had two major components. On the one hand, it created dense economic interdependence amongst the Western economies. On the other, America’s superintendence pacified the emergence of security competition among its allies. US ambitions were always kept partially in check by the constraints of the bipolar competition with the Soviet Union. 

In the aftermath of the Cold War, global politics entered a new age of American unipolarity. This gave US planners an almost historically unrivalled capacity to reshape the international system. To this end, America and its key allies embraced a global governance model characterised by economic liberalisation, integration, and the erosion of traditional national borders: what came to be known as the “Washington Consensus”. 

This “hyper-globalist” model promised prosperity through free trade, open borders, and interconnected economies. It envisioned a world where national sovereignty would increasingly be supplanted by supranational authorities, from the European Union to the WTO, creating an integrated liberal order that could manage global challenges collectively. This was, in effect, the second phase of the liberal order — one no longer containing ideological threats like Soviet communism but moving towards something almost utopian: a world without meaningful borders and the end of history underpinned by American hegemony.

This unipolar moment has long passed, and this structural shift in world politics has rightfully meant the US and its foreign policy elites are reassessing the cost-benefit analysis of the US’s global leadership. This grand strategic soul-searching can be traced to three critical inflexion points that marked the end of the “end of history”. 

The first major inflexion point came with China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. This was a symbolic act of faith in the potential of globalisation to harmonise economic interests and democratise political systems. American and Western elites saw China’s integration into the global economy as a triumph of liberalism, believing economic liberalisation would lead to political reform. Yet, this accession had profound and contradictory effects. By opening Western markets to Chinese goods, outsourcing jobs became the norm, which led to rapid deindustrialisation in many parts of the West.

Compounding these effects was the 2008 global financial crisis. The economic crisis exposed significant vulnerabilities within Western economies and severely impacted the working class, particularly in the United States and Europe. The subsequent period of austerity, imposed ostensibly to balance national budgets, led to drastic cuts in public services, reduced social welfare, and diminished prospects for many families. While ordinary people bore the brunt of these harsh measures, the financial sector — whose reckless practices had triggered the crisis — received massive bailouts. This juxtaposition of austerity for the masses and bailouts for the banks crystallised the deep inequalities that had been building for decades. The working class, already battered by deindustrialisation, now faced an era of economic precarity and reduced government support, reinforcing that the system was rigged in favour of wealthy elites. This sense of injustice and abandonment became a fertile ground for political disillusionment and the rise of populist movements across the Western world.

The second inflexion point was the emergence of a global censorship and cancel culture regime designed to contain dissent and protect the technocratic elites who benefited most from globalisation. This regime manifested through the weaponisation of mass media, social media platforms, and a pervasive politics of catastrophe — the idea that any deviation from the established globalist order would lead to disaster. We see it today, with hyperbolic meltdowns over Trump’s alleged “fascism”. Whether it was climate change, immigration, or economic policy, a narrative of impending catastrophe was employed to justify the concentration of power in the hands of a technocratic elite who portrayed themselves as the only ones capable of averting disaster. The Biden-Kamala team personified this regime’s politics. Liberal “be kind” platitudes behind which were forms of bureaucratic authoritarianism, attacks on free speech and an open-ended commitment to foreign intervention to shape the world into a sea of American liberal “mini-mes”. The mass media became little more than propaganda for this regime, with the endless pushing of identity politics and the gas-lighting of populations that were nannied and scolded for a range of sins: whiteness, heterosexuality, patriotism, believing in the biological reality of sex and so on. 

Institutions supposed to represent the people became increasingly insulated from popular pressure

The third inflexion point is the widening gap between the governed and those who govern — a crisis of democratic legitimacy. Across the West, citizens voted for policies that would address their concerns about immigration, cultural security, and economic inequality, yet found that their preferences were systematically ignored. They voted for lower immigration; they got open borders. They demanded cultural security; they got the repudiation of their traditions and institutions. This growing disillusionment was not just about specific policies but about the very responsiveness of democratic systems themselves. 

Institutions supposed to represent the people became increasingly insulated from popular pressure. National governments have ceded authority to supranational bodies like the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, or even non-governmental organisations that operate beyond the reach of voters. Elections seemed to change little; the same policies — open borders, neoliberal economics, cultural repudiation — persisted regardless of who was in power. The result was a growing sense that democracy had been hollowed out and reduced to a performative ritual. To question this democratic deficit was to place oneself outside the progressive arc of history: gammons, deplorables, garbage. 

This conflict pits two competing visions against each other

For all his flaws and dysfunctions, Trump has served as a catalyst — forcing the old establishment to confront its contradictions. His presidency underscores the emergence of a new paradigm where sovereignty, national interest, and the desire to be free from technocratic control increasingly take precedence. Crucially, this shift should not be viewed merely through the simplistic lens of left vs. right; rather, it is best understood as a more fundamental moment — a quasi-spiritual reckoning for the West, grappling with the kind of moral order that will define its future.

This conflict pits two competing visions against each other: on one side, an authoritarian framework — a top-down, imposed order championed by a transnational, anti-democratic administrative state; on the other, a resurgence of sovereignty, a defence of human agency, and a return to the values of freedom and self-determination. As articulated through these movements, sovereign internationalism attempts to redefine international engagement by affirming national interests and independence rather than subjugating to unelected global bureaucracies.

These values — freedom, open inquiry, and individual rights — are fragile, historically anomalous, and culturally contingent. They depend on a confident West that has become increasingly uncertain about its foundational principles. In this new era of great power competition, we must face the harsh truth: there are no guarantees that the West will prevail or that the values of freedom will continue to endure. As imperfect as we may believe it to be, the current moment is pregnant with multiple possibilities: a shifting world order has met the political agency required to see it reborn in the West’s keystone state. The West’s pedagogies must now work to ensure the change is not stillborn.