It is becoming much clearer, if it ever was, that President Donald Trump doesn’t much believe in the “rules based system”. If he does or did, he wouldn’t be firing off salvos of tariffs as if they were missiles intended for another purpose.Which, of course, they are.

To make America Great (again) he has first to deal with the vulnerability of its debt; and secondly, to clear away any legal obstacles that could complicate its diplomacy, whether bilaterally or plurilaterally, with particular nations.

In declaiming the rules of the international community, he gives himself scope to read or apply them to his liking.

For instance, tariffs are not measures that can be flung around regardless. Their deployment, as matters stand, are subject to rules and case law promulgated within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation, whose primary purpose is to reduce barriers to trade.

The trouble, of course, is that if a state wishes to challenge another’s actions on the rules, Trump has already emasculated the appellate system by blocking appointments to replace retiring or dying judges and without such replacements the appellate system cannot function.

While GATT rules are presumed to operate whether or not a dispute is in motion, at the least some justification for their use should be put to an affected state: the most notable would be that tariffs should be applied on in a non-discriminate way. That is, they should apply to the products of all member states equally with limited exceptions. The GATT also limits the ability of countries to place higher restrictions on goods from other member states than those applicable at home. So much for respect of a useful rule!

In another context, it doesn’t behove a subscriber to the rules based system to threaten another state with the dispossession of its territory, whole or part, as would seem to be the case looming for Denmark and its adjoining territory, Greenland. There has been no war with Denmark, a NATO ally, warranting terrirotial changes as were effected in Eastern Europe following the 1941-45 war.

The trouble with this stance and its compatibility with the maintenance of international peace and security is that it would appear to endorse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan on a similar pretext. In both cases rules were, or would be, broken. Does the international community let that go in order to preserve peace or does it take steps to counter it?

In a sense we are back to square one in spite of all the drafting of copious norms, rules and conventions since 1945 on which the rules based system stands. Of course, the poison pill infecting the system then and now is the veto power ceded to the Security Council’s which too easily frustrates effective action. In the realm of “power politics”, as many writers have observed, we live again in an alternative system where might is right and the devil takes the hindmost.

We are seeing examples of this everyday on a regional basis. What might pause this on a global basis is if politics were essentially a matter of dealing with real estate, where dealer Trump has a professional advantage!

A global order is one where: first and foremost, agreements must be kept (pacta sunt servander); and two where it is recognised that survival is threatened not just by man’s inhumanity to man, but by exogenous forces such as climate, disease and recklessness with resources.

For these to be brought within bounds is a process that awaits achievement.

Hopefully Generation Z will do better next time around!