Learning to live in a post-American world

In a recent article for Foregin Affairs , Mark Leonard makes that argument that America's leading role in the world order is fading. He discusses his argument with NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST: As President Trump pursues new tariffs and disparages international organizations, a new reality is emerging when it comes to how countries deal with one another and handle conflicts. The world's U.S.-led, rules-based order is fading, and that's a scary fact, given the number of conflicts around the world and major issues that need to be addressed, like climate change. That's the argument Mark Leonard makes in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. He's the cofounder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and he joins me now from London. Welcome, Mark. MARK LEONARD: Lovely to be with you. KURTZLEBEN: Now you warned that the world's rules-based order is changing. Before we dive into your argument, I want to ask, how would you describe what that world order has looked like and what has been good about it? LEONARD: Well, Henry Kissinger said that world order depended on two things. One is a set of rules which all of the big powers are willing to live with. They might not love them, but they will put up with them. And the other is a balance of power which allows those rules to be enforced. And if we look at the last 80 years or so, there was a rules-based order, which was developed firstly within the West and then after the end of the Cold War, it spread more widely, and lots of other countries took part in it. And the U.S. was its main sponsor. But the big shift, I think, was the second coming of President Trump, who then launched a revolution against this order that America created and told a new story about American history and said that actually America, rather than benefiting from this order, was one of the biggest victims of it. KURTZLEBEN: Right. And you also write in the piece that this - that the order had been eroding to some degree before Trump's second term. But it does sound like you're saying that Trump has acted as an accelerant of sorts. Is that a fair way of putting things? Or how would you describe how this second term has really changed things? LEONARD: I think Trump has been a massive accelerant of it because he's made a bonfire of lots of different institutions, has withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, from lots of different parts of the United Nations. He's made it clear that he doesn't believe in the World Trade Organization. But even more dramatic than that has been the way that he's told NATO members that if they don't spend enough, he won't defend them. He's threatened to annex the territory of Denmark by saying that he wants to get hold of Greenland. KURTZLEBEN: Right. It would have been unthinkable before him. LEONARD: Even in the imagination of science fiction writers and people like that, you wouldn't - you know, these would not have been credible story lines. KURTZLEBEN: However, the U.S. could get an entirely different leader after the 2028 elections, and also on that note, any number of other countries' leaders could change. Could any of that stop or at least slow down the changing of this established order? LEONARD: The fact that Donald Trump has not just been elected once but twice means that it's irresponsible not to hedge against that happening again and at least take certain precautions and make yourself less dependent on the United States than you were beforehand. But the other shift, I think is within American culture because I think Donald Trump, in some ways, is channeling how a lot of Americans feel. There aren't that many people in the American political space who think that it's right that America goes back to being the world's policeman, to defend a lot of these global institutions which are quite expensive. People right across the spectrum do think that nation-building at home is more important than being the leader of a global system. KURTZLEBEN: I want to finish with this. You write in your essay that you've spoken to a number of world leaders. I'm curious, what concerns do they share with you, and what are you advising them to do? LEONARD: My sort of main advice to different leaders is that they need to expect the unexpected and therefore - rather than relying on predictable order and trying to preserve that order. And they need to be flexible. They need to think on their feet. They need to have lots of different relationships with different players, and they need to be better at defending themselves and to think about security in a much wider way. So it's not just about tanks and planes and missiles, but everything in our lives can be turned into a weapon against us. So you need to think about food security and health security and cybersecurity. And you need to think in a much kind of wider way about the different things which are part of our everyday lives but which are very, very fragile and how to make them less fragile. And that is quite a bewildering change of mindset. KURTZLEBEN: That's Mark Leonard, cofounder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His piece, "The Abandoned Order: Learning To Live In A Post-American World," can be found in Foreign Affairs. Thank you so much, Mark. LEONARD: Thanks. It was great talking to you. (SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY GUERRERO'S "BY THE SEA AT THE END OF THE WORLD") Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST: As President Trump pursues new tariffs and disparages international organizations, a new reality is emerging when it comes to how countries deal with one another and handle conflicts. The world's U.S.-led, rules-based order is fading, and that's a scary fact, given the number of conflicts around the world and major issues that need to be addressed, like climate change. That's the argument Mark Leonard makes in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. He's the cofounder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and he joins me now from London. Welcome, Mark. MARK LEONARD: Lovely to be with you. KURTZLEBEN: Now you warned that the world's rules-based order is changing. Before we dive into your argument, I want to ask, how would you describe what that world order has looked like and what has been good about it? LEONARD: Well, Henry Kissinger said that world order depended on two things. One is a set of rules which all of the big powers are willing to live with. They might not love them, but they will put up with them. And the other is a balance of power which allows those rules to be enforced. And if we look at the last 80 years or so, there was a rules-based order, which was developed firstly within the West and then after the end of the Cold War, it spread more widely, and lots of other countries took part in it. And the U.S. was its main sponsor. But the big shift, I think, was the second coming of President Trump, who then launched a revolution against this order that America created and told a new story about American history and said that actually America, rather than benefiting from this order, was one of the biggest victims of it. KURTZLEBEN: Right. And you also write in the piece that this - that the order had been eroding to some degree before Trump's second term. But it does sound like you're saying that Trump has acted as an accelerant of sorts. Is that a fair way of putting things? Or how would you describe how this second term has really changed things? LEONARD: I think Trump has been a massive accelerant of it because he's made a bonfire of lots of different institutions, has withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, from lots of different parts of the United Nations. He's made it clear that he doesn't believe in the World Trade Organization. But even more dramatic than that has been the way that he's told NATO members that if they don't spend enough, he won't defend them. He's threatened to annex the territory of Denmark by saying that he wants to get hold of Greenland. KURTZLEBEN: Right. It would have been unthinkable before him. LEONARD: Even in the imagination of science fiction writers and people like that, you wouldn't - you know, these would not have been credible story lines. KURTZLEBEN: However, the U.S. could get an entirely different leader after the 2028 elections, and also on that note, any number of other countries' leaders could change. Could any of that stop or at least slow down the changing of this established order? LEONARD: The fact that Donald Trump has not just been elected once but twice means that it's irresponsible not to hedge against that happening again and at least take certain precautions and make yourself less dependent on the United States than you were beforehand. But the other shift, I think is within American culture because I think Donald Trump, in some ways, is channeling how a lot of Americans feel. There aren't that many people in the American political space who think that it's right that America goes back to being the world's policeman, to defend a lot of these global institutions which are quite expensive. People right across the spectrum do think that nation-building at home is more important than being the leader of a global system. KURTZLEBEN: I want to finish with this. You write in your essay that you've spoken to a number of world leaders. I'm curious, what concerns do they share with you, and what are you advising them to do? LEONARD: My sort of main advice to different leaders is that they need to expect the unexpected and therefore - rather than relying on predictable order and trying to preserve that order. And they need to be flexible. They need to think on their feet. They need to have lots of different relationships with different players, and they need to be better at defending themselves and to think about security in a much wider way. So it's not just about tanks and planes and missiles, but everything in our lives can be turned into a weapon against us. So you need to think about food security and health security and cybersecurity. And you need to think in a much kind of wider way about the different things which are part of our everyday lives but which are very, very fragile and how to make them less fragile. And that is quite a bewildering change of mindset. KURTZLEBEN: That's Mark Leonard, cofounder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His piece, "The Abandoned Order: Learning To Live In A Post-American World," can be found in Foreign Affairs. Thank you so much, Mark. LEONARD: Thanks. It was great talking to you. (SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY GUERRERO'S "BY THE SEA AT THE END OF THE WORLD") Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

As President Trump pursues new tariffs and disparages international organizations, a new reality is emerging when it comes to how countries deal with one another and handle conflicts. The world's U.S.-led, rules-based order is fading, and that's a scary fact, given the number of conflicts around the world and major issues that need to be addressed, like climate change. That's the argument Mark Leonard makes in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. He's the cofounder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and he joins me now from London. Welcome, Mark. MARK LEONARD: Lovely to be with you. KURTZLEBEN: Now you warned that the world's rules-based order is changing. Before we dive into your argument, I want to ask, how would you describe what that world order has looked like and what has been good about it? LEONARD: Well, Henry Kissinger said that world order depended on two things. One is a set of rules which all of the big powers are willing to live with. They might not love them, but they will put up with them. And the other is a balance of power which allows those rules to be enforced. And if we look at the last 80 years or so, there was a rules-based order, which was developed firstly within the West and then after the end of the Cold War, it spread more widely, and lots of other countries took part in it. And the U.S. was its main sponsor. But the big shift, I think, was the second coming of President Trump, who then launched a revolution against this order that America created and told a new story about American history and said that actually America, rather than benefiting from this order, was one of the biggest victims of it. KURTZLEBEN: Right. And you also write in the piece that this - that the order had been eroding to some degree before Trump's second term. But it does sound like you're saying that Trump has acted as an accelerant of sorts. Is that a fair way of putting things? Or how would you describe how this second term has really changed things? LEONARD: I think Trump has been a massive accelerant of it because he's made a bonfire of lots of different institutions, has withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, from lots of different parts of the United Nations. He's made it clear that he doesn't believe in the World Trade Organization. But even more dramatic than that has been the way that he's told NATO members that if they don't spend enough, he won't defend them. He's threatened to annex the territory of Denmark by saying that he wants to get hold of Greenland. KURTZLEBEN: Right. It would have been unthinkable before him. LEONARD: Even in the imagination of science fiction writers and people like that, you wouldn't - you know, these would not have been credible story lines. KURTZLEBEN: However, the U.S. could get an entirely different leader after the 2028 elections, and also on that note, any number of other countries' leaders could change. Could any of that stop or at least slow down the changing of this established order? LEONARD: The fact that Donald Trump has not just been elected once but twice means that it's irresponsible not to hedge against that happening again and at least take certain precautions and make yourself less dependent on the United States than you were beforehand. But the other shift, I think is within American culture because I think Donald Trump, in some ways, is channeling how a lot of Americans feel. There aren't that many people in the American political space who think that it's right that America