Is Trump the end of the international rules-based order?

Analysts mull if this isn’t the beginning of the end for the ‘rules-based order’, which has long been accused of hypocrisy. Gaza had made the US choose openly between adhering to the international “rules-based order” – the system of laws and norms established in the wake of World War II to avoid wars and foster democracy – it claims to uphold, or support Israel. The Democratic administration of former US President Joe Biden, which was in the last days of its tenure when it voted “no” on the UNGA resolution, repeatedly claimed to be acting in defence of the rules-based order – not least in its condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – in all matters other than those related to Israel and Palestine. “Donald Trump’s willingness to betray Ukraine and his rejection of the basic principle of territorial sovereignty is consistent with simultaneously giving Israel a green light to proceed in ways that break the law and seem likely only to fuel an endless cycle of violence,” Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College in Dublin, who previously worked at the ICJ, told Al Jazeera. The Trump administration’s barely disguised contempt for traditional systems of global governance has prompted observers to suggest that the lip service paid to a rules-based order may be over and the world instead faces a return to “machtpolitik”: The pure, naked power that dominated international relations in the 19th century.