In the aftermath of the twentieth-century world wars, governments created “a new legal order that elevated economic tools over military might to ensure peace,” write the scholars Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. But that order is eroding. U.S. President Donald Trump, in particular, is now trying to “restore war or the threat of it as the main way that states resolve their disagreements and seek economic gain.”
Trump has threatened to forcibly take Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal and seems ambivalent about “defending other states’ right not to be conquered” even as China and Russia “are seeking to reshape international norms to suit their interests,” Hathaway and Shapiro note. If the prohibition against the use of force disappears, they warn, “the consequences will be grave: a global arms race, renewed wars of conquest, shrinking trade, and the collapse of the cooperation needed to confront shared global threats.”
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