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Over eighty years, the partnership across the Atlantic was grounded in a common promise to mutual security and a common set of values focusing on popular rule, individual liberties, and the rule of law.

That pivotal chapter was formally launched in the spring of 1947 during a concise speech by President Harry Truman, who pledged American support to protect Europe from further expansion by the USSR.

The United States led the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the IMF, and the UN. It embedded itself into what later became known as the "framework of international law", a system where nation-states committed to reciprocal duties designed to protect democratic societies from aggressive autocratic regimes.

Today, the newly published US security doctrine, published in December, suggests that, from the White House's perspective, that shared endeavor has reached its terminus; much of what the world assumed about the US's global function is a thing of the past.

The strategy discusses the "alleged 'rules-based international order'", enclosing the latter phrase in quotation marks: a form of undermining through punctuation.

An Ideological Turn

Deputy JD Vance forewarned America's partners across the Atlantic of this coming change during a address at the Munich conference in February 2025.

"He asserted plainly that the primary risk to Europe was not originating from Russia but from internal sources - from those restricting expression, stifling opposition and thereby eroding European democracy," the speech noted. He was highly critical of the "cosmopolitan elite."

A prominent French newspaper described the address as a declaration of "political conflict" against Europe.

The December NSS codifies Vance's observations, converting them from speech into official doctrine.

"Without a doubt America is not anymore the country that championed the international norms that have been in place since the end of the Second World War," notes a previous high-ranking figure from the Department of State and a policy institute. "It is transitioning to a fundamentally altered stance."

Consequently, if the world is indeed moving away from that established order, what is it heading toward? And what are the consequences for the rest of the world, and in particular for Europe?

''The Global Context Has Changed'

"International institutions, especially the UN, have been characterized by strong anti-US bias, and have failed to advance our or any other particular purpose," argues a analyst at a Washington-based advocacy group.

According to her analysis - having once been Deputy National Security Adviser to the former President - transformation to the world order is certain in a dynamic global environment.

"Another key point we face is that when that aforementioned global rules system was created after the Second World War, merely eighty years back, China wasn't a major concern. We are living in a new reality."

This system of international law, built in the years following the global conflict, was the creation of a generation that had experienced the horrors of imperial competition and was resolved to avert its recurrence.

That international system, flawed and incomplete though it undoubtedly was, was the legacy of that collective experience.

However, the NSS contends that Washington's approach veered off course in the years that followed - and it attributes fault to what it calls "the Washington establishment."

"They lashed American policy to a array of supranational bodies, some of which are driven by explicit opposition to America and many by a supranational agenda that openly aims to undermine the power of nation-states," it reads.

It indicates that from now on, the US will seek to reduce the reach of international organizations.

The Primacy of the Nation-State

"The core actor in international relations is and will remain the independent state… We stand for the national prerogatives of nations, against the authority-undermining intrusions of the most intrusive transnational organizations…"

Elsewhere in the document, discussing the "distribution of global influence", it states: "The disproportionate power of major powers is a timeless truth of international relations."

Russian leadership responded to the review with praise, stating that much of it matched Moscow's own viewpoint.

"I believe Trump, Xi, Putin and their more authoritarian acolytes are seeking to usher in a return to an era of major power rivalry," observes a retired leader of the UK's armed forces.

However, a prominent scholar in international security believes the new Security Strategy is not as radical a break with the past as it could be interpreted.

"We need to be careful about the rules-based international order, which is a concept that came into general use in the last ten years," he argues. "Look back and you find many infringements of the rules, Vietnam for example. So there's a sort of rosy glow about the past at times and everyone should be careful about nostalgia for what was a complicated history."

A Forceful Return of Sovereign Power

Washington's military operation in the Venezuelan capital Caracas that led to the detention of the country's leader Nicolas Maduro is an preliminary case of this more forceful application of independent action.

Some international law experts have raised doubts about the lawfulness of the US intervention, arguing it may have violated UN charters governing the use of force.

The US maintains its actions were within its rights.

"According to US statute it certainly was [legal]," a previous senior Pentagon official has stated. "The Venezuelan leader - most of our allies in Europe have not accepted his authority so he is an usurper. Because of that he is deprived of the normal protections that heads of state would have...particularly when we are looking at domestic laws that exist in the United States, that would supersede anything the UN says."

The NSS asserts, for the United States, the right to be the leading nation in the Americas, and to compel its hemispheric neighbors into support for Washington's interests.

This is a powerful reaffirmation of the