全球秩序的裂痕与两种未来图景
近期，美国总统在社交媒体上发布了一张经过处理的图片，显示北约领导人围观一张地图，其中美国不仅控制了委内瑞拉，更令人震惊地占据了忠诚盟友——丹麦和加拿大的领土。这一举动在许多人看来如同疯子所为。然而，根据加拿大总理马克·卡尼（Mark Carney）的一段病毒式演讲，这恰恰是更大趋势的一部分：一个“大国竞争”时代正在回归，规则导向秩序（Rules-Based Order）正在消退，强权政治的逻辑——“强者为所欲为，弱者忍受一切”——正在重现。尽管卡尼对如何在新世界秩序中行事有着截然不同的愿景，但他关于大国竞争回归的观点，与特朗普外交政策的架构师之一斯蒂芬·米勒（Stephen Miller）近期在CNN上的表述不谋而合。米勒强调，现实世界由力量和权力主导，因此特朗普的新国家安全战略回归“门罗主义”（Monroe Doctrine）——美国历史上旨在将其他大国排除在西半球之外的政策——是合乎逻辑的。这意味着，美国将毫不掩饰地运用其军事力量来维护本半球的利益。一些学者，如韦斯·米切尔博士（Dr. Wes Mitchell），认为特朗普的行动根植于清晰且引人注目的“宏大战略”（Grand Strategy）逻辑，核心在于“巩固”（Consolidation）：通过巩固其在本半球的力量，美国旨在恢复实力，以便最终能与俄罗斯和中国等其他大国在新时代展开竞争。
Original English
The president of the United States recently shared this photoshopped image on social media showing NATO leaders a map where the U.S. has taken control of not only Venezuela, but, more shockingly, territory from loyal NATO allies that helped the US fight several wars in the past decades. Specifically, Denmark and Canada. To many, this seems like something only a madman would do. But according to a viral speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, this is all part of a bigger trend. This is a return to an era of great power rivalry that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must. And while Carney has a completely different vision on how to behave in such a new world order. The overall idea that we are moving back to an era of great power competition is actually in line with what one of the architects of Trump's foreign policy, Stephen Miller, recently told CNN's Jake Tapper. But we live in a world in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. Therefore, it makes sense that Trump's new national security strategy literally says they are returning to the so-called Monroe Doctrine, under which the US has historically sought to keep other great powers out of the Western Hemisphere. This means that, according to Miller, the US will now be using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. And that's exactly what we've seen in the last few weeks. Isn't it? Therefore, some, like Doctor Wes Mitchell, have said that Trump's actions are in fact rooted in a clear and compelling logic grounded in the discipline of grand strategy. So what is this logic? Well, one word consolidation. Venezuela. Greenland. Canada. The US is acting like a great power that is consolidating its power in its own hemisphere to recover its strength first, which will allow it to ultimately compete with other great powers like Russia and China in a new era of great power competition.然而，根据一篇近期广为流传的国际关系学论文的作者——斯泰西·戈达德教授（Professor Stacy Goddard）和亚伯拉罕·纽曼（Abraham Newman）——的观点，上述解释存在不足。他们认为，仔细审视后会发现，俄罗斯和中国在委内瑞拉及格陵兰周边的活动极为有限，且其资源成本过高，对美国并无真正益处。因此，他们提出，要真正理解特朗普对邻国和盟友的攻击，需要跳出“大国竞争”的视角，回溯到大国竞争时代之前——即那个由争夺王位的皇室家族主导、他们更关心个人财富和个人地位的时代。这种模式在人类历史的大部分时间里都主导着国际关系，正如《权力的游戏》（Game of Thrones）所描绘的那样，一群精英只关心如何在家族间重新分配资源。那么，我们是否可以认为，特朗普及其周围那些拥有炼油和矿产财富的亿万富翁构成了一个“宫廷”，而他们在委内瑞拉、格陵兰的行动，以及对中国最大竞争对手印度施加的高额关税，都指向了这种“新王权主义”（Neo-Royalism）的逻辑？这引出了核心问题：我们当前看到的新世界秩序，是特朗普与卡尼所代表的“大国政治”回归，还是更像是腐朽的“王室王朝”政治的复苏？
Original English
However, according to the authors of a recent viral international relations paper, Professor Stacy Goddard and Abraham Newman, this explanation does not make much sense because actually, upon closer inspection, Russia's and China's activities in Venezuela and around Greenland are extremely limited. On top of that, their resources are way too expensive to truly benefit the US. Therefore, they argue that to truly understand Trump's attacks on neighbors and allies, we need to view the new international order through the lens of what came before the era of great power competition. The era of competing royal houses that cared about personal wealth and personal status. To see how that works other than human. You know, I think Sisi and I always give the example of, Game of Thrones. You know, it's like every almost everybody on earth relates to this show about a small group of elites who really don't care about their societies in general. They just care about redistributing resources amongst these houses. And that is a system that for most of, of human history, dominated international relations. So could it be that if we view Trump as a neo royalist and the refinery and mineral mining owning billionaires around him as his court, Venezuela, Greenland, and also strangely high tariffs against China's biggest rival, India, it will all fall into place. So who is right is the new world order we are seeing right now a Trump versus Ghani style return to great power politics, or rather, the return of the corrupt politics of royal dynasties.为了探究哪个叙事更能解释当前的新世界秩序，我们首先需要理解我们正在告别的——即自由国际秩序（Liberal International Order）的兴衰。1941年，在纽芬兰，温斯顿·丘吉尔（Winston Churchill）与富兰克林·罗斯福（Franklin D. Roosevelt）共同擘画了一个理想的国际秩序蓝图，旨在避免再次发生毁灭性的世界大战。他们确立了规则导向国际秩序的第一个支柱：国家拥有不可侵犯的边界，享有自决权，能够自由贸易并选择贸易伙伴，海洋则应保持开放以促进国际贸易。第二个支柱是经济层面，源于1944年的布雷顿森林会议（Bretton Woods）。44个国家齐聚一堂，旨在终结20世纪30年代和40年代的经济混乱。这次会议催生了一系列旨在建立秩序的国际机构：后来演变为世界贸易组织（WTO）的《关税与贸易总协定》（GATT），规定关税应平等对待所有国家；世界银行（World Bank），为所有贫穷国家提供发展贷款，不问其政治归属；以及国际货币基金组织（IMF），其贷款旨在稳定货币，其审批标准基于经济计划而非政治忠诚。第三个支柱是联合国（UN），一个由强弱国家组成的共同体，承诺遵守更多规则。通过1944年的邓巴顿橡树园会议（Dumbarton Oaks）、1945年的雅尔塔会议（Yalta）和旧金山会议（San Francisco），联合国得以成立。签署《联合国宪章》的国家承诺尊重人权、遵守国际法、仅为共同利益使用武力，并致力于促进全人类的经济与社会进步。这些崇高的目标，如同布雷顿森林体系一样，催生了理论上能限制国家单方面行动的国际机构，如授权战争的安理会和由国际法院（ICJ）追究责任的国家。此外，一些国家还加入了国际刑事法院（ICC），该法院曾起诉苏丹和刚果等国的领导人。
Original English
To find out, I did, on the one hand, a massive deep dive into the fundamentals and the history of great power politics and how it compares to Trump's new national security strategy versus Ghani's speech. And, on the other hand, an in-depth interview with Professors Godard and Newman. But before we get into which story can explain the New World order best, we need to understand what we are leaving behind. That is the rise and fall of the rules based liberal international order. Newfoundland, Canada, 1941. Churchill, arguably still the leader of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Meets his counterpart from the richest nation on Earth, Franklin D Roosevelt. Together, they sit down to discuss what they see as the ideal international order, an order that would never again produce another devastating world war. And here they've just agreed on the first pillar of the rules based international order, which means that nations have borders that should be kept as they are. They have a right to self-governance. They have a right to trade freely, and they can decide with whom they trade. And finally, the seas should be kept open to facilitate this international trade. Now, the second pillar of the liberal rules based international order was economic. And for that, we have to go back to Bretton Woods, the United States, 1944, 44 nations come together to put an end to economic chaos. The economic case of the 1930s and 40s. This conference sets the stage for the following international institutions that will create order. Where before there was chaos, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would later turn into the World Trade Organization. This meant that tariff should be the same for everyone. Then there's the world Bank. All poor countries should get loans to develop independent of their political allegiance to certain great powers. Then there's the IMF. Getting loans to save your currency from collapsing will now depend on your economic program, rather than your political allegiance to certain great powers. Finally, the third pillar of the rules based order was the UN, a community of states, both strong and weak, that all pledged to follow even more rules. 1944 Dumbarton Oaks, the United States 1945 Yalta, the Soviet Union, and finally 1945 San Francisco, the United States. These conferences led to the creation of the United Nations. Countries that signed the UN charter agreed that they would respect number one, human rights. Number two, international law. Number three, they signed that armed force shall not be used safe in the common interest. And then finally, that the goal of this new international order was to promote the economic and social advancement of all people. Very lofty goals. And just as with Bretton Woods, this led to the creation of some international institutions which theoretically made it more difficult for states to act on their own in key areas like war, which was only allowed if the UN authorized it and justice states were held accountable by the International Court of Justice. On top of that, some states went even further by signing up to the International Criminal Court, which could and did sue leaders from weaker states like Sudan and the Congo.然而，正如一位评论家所承认的，关于国际规则秩序的故事并非完全真实。我们知道，最强大的国家会在方便时豁免自己，贸易规则的执行是不对称的，国际法对不同身份的被告或受害者适用时，其严谨程度也各不相同。例如，国际刑事法院对普京和内塔尼亚胡发出了逮捕令，但他们几乎无法被触及。国际货币基金组织对埃及、希腊、阿根廷等小国实施的痛苦经济改革，远比对英国等大国严格。同样，联合国因侵犯人权行为制裁了津巴布韦和朝鲜等小国，却从未制裁过中国、苏联和美国等大国。尽管各国承诺不相互侵略（除非是自卫），但在所谓的“自由规则导向秩序”时期，东西方大国都曾入侵过多个国家。尽管如此，我们仍不能完全确定这些行为是否完全是规则秩序和国际机构的必然结果。回过头看，自由国际秩序似乎取得了巨大成功：没有发生新的世界大战，即使不考虑这些，1945年至2011年间国家间的冲突也相对少于之前的几十年。我们还可以看到，在该秩序下，国家间的关系平均而言变得更加友好，甚至出现了像北约这样的安全共同体。反观过去，法国、德国和英国等国家之间曾长期敌对，而在自由秩序下，这种严重或轻微的敌对关系大大减少。经济方面，在经历了全球范围内的巨大削减后，全球贸易爆炸式增长，更重要的是，全球贫困人口大幅减少。然而，尽管自由贸易在一定程度上帮助了数亿人脱贫（尤其是在亚洲），但在自由秩序的后半段，美国底层50%人口的收入份额却显著下降。因此，美国选出一位两次公开宣称要颠覆这一自由秩序的候选人，似乎也并非偶然。但我们必须承认，这一进程并非由特朗普一人开启。事实上，三个主要大国似乎都参与其中：2014年，联合国安理会常任理事国俄罗斯吞并了克里米亚，并在2022年从乌克兰手中夺取了其他几个省份。在经济层面，特朗普2018年的关税战已经完全破坏了低关税、普遍适用的原则。与此同时，中国通过成为贫困和危机国家的最大贷款国之一，积极削弱了国际货币基金组织和世界银行的作用。最后，中国和俄罗斯本就存在糟糕的人权记录，而美国在2003年布什和切尼政府授权使用酷刑的“黑狱”和关塔那摩事件后，也严重损害了其信誉。尽管如此，特朗普现在几乎每月都宣布对新国家征收关税，并威胁要吞并最忠诚盟友的领土，这确实像是给规则导向国际秩序敲响了丧钟。难怪卡尼说我们正经历的是一场“断裂”，而非“过渡”。自由的、规则导向的国际秩序已经死亡，这一点几乎无人争议。
Original English
But crucially, as Kony admitted, we knew the story of the international rules based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. For example, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Putin and Netanyahu, but they are practically untouchable. The IMF was far stricter, enforcing painful economic reforms on small powers like Egypt, Greece and Argentina than against strong countries like the UK. Also, the UN sanctioned small powers like Zimbabwe and North Korea for human rights abuses, but never strong countries like China, the Soviet Union and the US. For similar offenses. And despite countries signing up not to invade one another except for self-defense, both Western and Eastern powers invaded several countries during this so-called liberal rules based order. Still, we cannot be 100% sure that this was because of the rules based order and international institutions. And in hindsight, I think we can say that the liberal international order looked like a big success. There were no new world wars, and even without taking those into account, the years from 45 to 2011 had relatively fewer conflicts between states than the decades before them. We can also see that in the liberal order, relations between countries on average got much friendlier. We even saw several countries joining a security community in NATO. And on the flip side, we saw far less countries being in severe or lesser rivalry like France, Germany, in the UK, which used to always be at each other's throats. Finally, on the economic side, after a massive reduction in global terms, we saw an explosion in global trade and more importantly, we saw a massive reduction in global poverty. And yet, while free trade under the rules based international order arguably helped drag millions out of poverty, especially in Asia, the bottom 50% of Americans saw their share of income drop remarkably, in the second half of the liberal rules based order. So it is perhaps no wonder that Americans elected a candidate twice that talked openly about blowing up this liberal order. But we have to be honest, it was not just Trump that started this process. The three great powers actually seem to have been in on it together. First, in 2014, member of the UN Permanent Security Council Russia annexed Crimea and then in 2022, several other provinces from Ukraine. Next, when it comes to the economic pillar, Trump's 2018 tariff barrage already completely undermined the principle of low tariffs that should be equal against all nations. Meanwhile, China actively undermined the IMF and world Bank when it became one of the biggest lenders to poor and crisis stricken countries. Finally, both China and Russia already had a terrible human rights record, and honestly, the US lost a lot of credibility in 2003. And the Bush and Cheney, when they essentially authorized the use of torture in CIA black sites and in Guantanamo Bay. Still, Trump now almost announcing new tariffs against a new nation every month and threatening to annex territories from its most loyal allies. That genuinely looks like the final nail in the coffin of the rules based international order. So no wonder that Carney said that we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. The liberal, rules based international order is dead about that. Almost everyone agrees.那么，接下来是什么？我们是走向卡尼和特朗普政府所设想的“大国竞争”时代，还是应该回溯更远，通过“新王权主义”的视角来理解特朗普的混乱行为，即新兴的“新国王”及其亿万富翁支持者群体（如特朗普王朝、普京家族和莫迪家族）的崛起？
第一种观点认为，我们正回归一个“大国竞争”（Great Power Competition）的新时代，其中特朗普和普京等大国领导人的愿景与卡尼等中等强国领导人的愿景截然不同。这意味着世界将更像18、19世纪乃至20世纪初的样子。国际关系学者通常称之为“威斯特伐利亚全球秩序”（Westphalian Global Order），它以1648年的《威斯特伐利亚和约》命名，该条约极大地削弱了皇室家族的权力，转而强化了民族国家及其官僚机构。在这种新的威斯特伐利亚秩序下，联合国、IMF和WTO等国际机构将失去其仅存的微弱影响力。世界将再次完全由美国、中国、俄罗斯，或许还有印度和欧洲等大国的行动决定。根据著名“现实主义”（Realism）学派的国际关系学教授约翰·米尔斯海默（John Mearsheimer）的观点，在这种秩序下，国家永远无法确定自己不会毗邻一个拥有恶意意图的强大国家。这促使各国竭尽所能地增强自身实力，并根据其最终实力被划分为大国、中等强国或小国，它们将扮演不同形式的权力游戏。小国要么寻求生存，要么依附于大国寻求保护。中等强国则可能试图利用大国之间的矛盾，或者采取卡尼所倡导的“价值导向现实主义”（Value-Based Realism），即像加拿大和芬兰这样的自由国家，在每种地缘政治情境下，都会权衡其自由价值观（如人权、尊重边界、民主）与地缘政治现实。这对加拿大而言是一个与过去的决裂，因为其前总理特鲁多（Justin Trudeau）曾频繁挑战中国等大国的人权记录，而卡尼则暗示加拿大可能不再这样做，如果这样做会招致大国的麻烦。对于未来的道路，也许自由价值导向的中等强国可以与其他价值观相似的国家结成联盟，以对抗价值观不同的强大国家，例如特朗普治下的美国。
Original English
The real question is what's next? Are we heading back to an era of great power competition like Carney and the Trump administration seem to believe? Or should we think back further, that Trump's chaotic actions are better understood through the lens of the emergence of new kings and cohorts of billionaire backers such as the Trump dynasty, the House of Putin and the House of Modi? Chapter two. What will the new global order actually look like? The first view is that we are now heading back to a new era of great power competition, where great power leaders like Trump and Putin have a very different vision than middle power leaders like Ghani. This means that the world will look a lot more like it did in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. International relations. Scholars tend to refer to this order as the Westphalian Global Order. After the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which greatly reduced the power of royal houses in favor of nation states and their bureaucracies. In this new Westphalian order, you may say international institutions like the UN, IMF and World Trade Organization lose what's left of their waning power. Instead, the world will once again be completely determined by the actions of great powers like the US, China, Russia, and perhaps India and Europe. According to international relations professor John Mearsheimer, who famously belongs to the school of thought known as realism in such a world order that states can never be certain that they won't end up living next door to a really powerful state that has malign intentions. All of that causes states to do everything they can to be as powerful as possible, and depending on how powerful they end up being, States are then classified as great powers, middle powers, or small powers, and they will all play a different variation of the power game. First, small powers will either try to survive by claiming neutrality, like Sweden and Belgium did in the Second World War, or by aligning themselves with a great power for protection like Finland and Hungary did. Meanwhile, middle powers will either try to play great powers off against one another like India has historically done, or they will do the same that Ghani suggested in his speech, which is value based realism, meaning that liberal countries like Canada and Finland, for example, for every geopolitical situation they will weigh their liberal values, such as the importance of human rights, respecting boundaries and democracy. And they will weigh that with geopolitical reality, especially for Canada. This is a break with the past concretely, whereas Canada's previous Prime minister, Justin Trudeau, frequently challenged great powers like China on their human rights records. Ghani is subtly indicating that Canada may no longer do this. If the geopolitical reality is that this would get Canada into trouble with a great power simultaneously. Currently, in the case of the way forward, maybe for a liberal value based mill powers to form coalitions with countries with similar values that may help them stand up to great powers with different values, such as Trump's America. You see, while the Trump team also rides in their national security strategy that they believe in realism, now they give a version of it a different name flexible realism, which so far seems to mean might is right. A strong country like the U.S. can take Greenland from Denmark, because Denmark is a tiny country with a tiny economy and a tiny military, they cannot defend Greenland. And this is what international scholars mean when they say might is right. The US should get Greenland because it is strong enough to defend Greenland from other great powers, and Denmark is not. But why does a great power like the US need to do this in the first place? Aren't they already powerful enough? No. Say scholars like wertheimer, without international commitments to respect borders. Even great powers like the US, Russia or China will always fear that another great power will become much stronger than them, upsetting the balance of power. Therefore, they may even want to dominate your region of the world. Is because in that situation, there is no other state that is capable of hurting you. And this logic leads to so-called spheres of influence, where great powers try to deny other great powers the ability to threaten them by keeping them as far away as possible. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the US tried to keep other great powers out of the Americas under the so-called Monroe Doctrine and using similar logic. Hitler at some point actually proposed a sphere of influence in Europe, which he called the German Monroe Doctrine, and people like Professor Mearsheimer have used this logic of the Monroe Doctrine to make the case that the West provoked Russia into invading Ukraine by meddling in its sphere of influence. The Trump team has written in the national security strategy that they are essentially returning to the Monroe Doctrine. Some call it the donno doctrine now, and some, like Doctor West Mitchell, have used this type of logic to argue that term strategic actions are in fact rooted in a clear and compelling logic, firmly grounded in the discipline of grand strategy. He says that Russia and China are the US natural great power competitors, but that the US no longer has the strength to fight them all over the world, and therefore the US is now essentially retreating to its own Western Hemisphere. Just this is done historically, many times before. Venezuela and Greenland are both about securing access to vital resources and, crucially, about denying them to competitors. So what we've seen so far is simply a return to great power competition. Everything the US has done so far is just in the national interest. Flexible realism is a cynical but not illogical take on America First. However, to me there were at least three details about recent events that I could not explain with this theory. First, capturing Maduro does not seem to have been in US national interest, given that the oil there is too expensive to get out of the ground, and China did not get that much anyway. Second, annexing Greenland and in the process completely alienating European allies does not make much sense either, given that the US already had almost unlimited military access to the island and easy economic access to its minerals. Finally, if Trump was truly following a great power style strategy, why did he recently tear of the hell out of India, which is China's natural rival in Asia? This is where Godard and Newman's neo royalist theory starts making a lot more sense. They claim that what we are seeing today is, rather than a system of territorial nation states, rather than a system of rule governed institutions. What we see is a system of international politics that structured around the interest of ruling clicks, which include a personalized, absolute sovereign, and basically his network of whether or not his family, whether or not its financial interests, ideologues that legitimate his rule. They call this neorealism because rather than a return to great power politics of the Westphalian order, it would potentially be more like a return to the world order before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. You see, the Peace of Westphalia came about to put an end to various devastating wars that plagued the Holy Roman Empire, Wars that often came about because of royal succession, not the national interest. For example, the Dutch War of Independence against Spain arguably came about after that suddenly found themselves with a new Spanish king that had essentially inherited the Netherlands through a series of marriages. So in the royalist system, the main actors were not states, but rather ruling monarchs and their clicks. Therefore, most wars in those days were not about the national interest at all. They were about increasing royal wealth and status. Similarly, Godard and Newman argue that in the case of Maduro's capture, Greenland and the tariffs against India, it's not about national interest. It's about this small group of hyper elites, these this clique actor kind of clusters interest. And so that really drives a very different logic of how international politics functions. So while Venezuela's oil is too expensive to benefit the American oil industry as a whole, the specific American refineries that did benefit just so happened to be controlled by Trump Mega-Donors, such as John Edison from Vidor. Similarly, while Greenland's minerals are not worth enough for the US to alienate allies over, that price may well be worth it to billionaires with extensive interest in Greenland like Ronald Lauder, who reportedly put the idea into Trump's head in 2018. Finally, there's Trump's mega tariffs against India. Again, from a great Barr perspective, it makes no sense to alienate China's biggest Asian rival. But if you consider that Modi very publicly humiliated Trump by stating that he had nothing to do with Pakistani Indian fees in the summer, Indian tariffs immediately after that incident start making a lot more sense. But while neorealism can fill in a lot of gaps in their article, Goddard and Neumann do recognize that the Royals dynamics have always been in the background. After all, even during the height of great power politics, the 19th century Belgian King Leopold, for example, used the Belgian state to conquer and dominate his own personal colony in the Congo. And even today, Trump style personal rule is quite common. However, the difference between MBS or Orban and Trump is that they just don't have the material or status capability to transform the international system. And that's why Trump is so exceptional, because he has the U.S. military and the U.S. economy behind it. In other words, just as Westphalian style, great power politics were always still there in the background during, for example, the Cold War. Goddard and Neumann argue that royalist elements are and have always been a part of the international order as well. Therefore, my conclusion, my conclusion is that to truly make sense of where the global order is going, we need all three lenses. If going, you can make international organizations become more powerful again. The global order will again become more predictable. But if they become weaker, we will either see more great power games where small and medium powers like Ukraine, Venezuela and perhaps even Canada become pawns or battlefields for great powers that continuously seek to become more and more powerful because they fear that if they won't, they will not remain a great power for very long. However, if great powers are governed by autocratic or illiberal rulers, then we will increasingly see incidents like Trump's Board of Peace, which he plans to stay on even if he is no longer U.S. president, where great power influence will not be used in the national interest, but rather to enrich Personalis leaders and their clicks or elevate their social standing amongst a new class of global rulers and their courts that compete very much like the royal houses of game of Thrones for power and status. So, given that Trump will be in power for at least three more years, and given that far right populist parties are still lurking in the shadows in many other middle powers as well, I think it's a safe bet that we will be seeing a more volatile international order emerging, which, whether it be for personal or national interest, tariffs, sanctions and even military strikes and wars, will sadly become more common. The economic evidence so far tells us that this will make most of us poorer and less secure, especially given that, unlike in the 19th century, great powers now have weapons that could kill us all at the click of a button. Still, it doesn't have to be that way. For example, some have argued that at the Congress of Vienna after the body was defeated, the return of realism looked inevitable. Yet this never happened. Similarly, who knows? Perhaps Trump's successor will see the value of the liberal, rules based international order again, and together with Geithner and others, they may build yet another liberal international order from the ashes of the one that we just said goodbye to. So what do you think? Let me know in the comments and if you want to know more, I highly recommend you check out three follow up analysis from our advertising sponsor, The Economist. Specifically, I recommend you check out this detailed analysis about. While Trump may have backed down about Greenland, it's only the tip of the iceberg of Europe's geopolitical vulnerabilities. Indeed, why is it that in the New World order everybody seems to be picking on Europe specifically? The economist answers that question as well. Finally, check out The Economist's take on whether Mark Carney can actually help Canada find its place in this new world order. I think as these analysis show, The Economist delivers insights that help you see the bigger picture. This is why I highly recommend you subscribe to The Economist, which now offers an exclusive 35% discount for many macro viewers. Whether you prefer their daily journalism in The Economist app or you're like me, you prefer to catch up on the global economy during the weekend, sitting down with a nice cup of coffee and the paper edition. You'll always stay on top of the latest global developments, no matter where you are, so don't miss out. Click a link in the description or top comment below, or head over to economist.com/money Macro to claim your exclusive 35% discount. Today.特朗普团队在其国家安全战略中也声称信奉现实主义，但他们将其称为“灵活现实主义”（Flexible Realism），迄今为止似乎意味着“强权即公理”（Might is Right）。一个强大的国家如美国，可以从丹麦手中夺取格陵兰，因为丹麦国力微薄，无力保卫。这就是国际学者所说的“强权即公理”。美国应该得到格陵兰，因为它有能力保护它免受其他大国的侵害，而丹麦则不能。但一个像美国这样的大国，为何首先需要这样做？它们难道不已经足够强大了吗？不。正如学者们所说，没有尊重边界的国际承诺，即使是美国、俄罗斯或中国这样的大国，也永远担心另一个大国会变得更强，从而打破力量平衡。因此，它们甚至可能想要主宰你的地区，因为在这种情况下，没有其他国家有能力伤害你。这种逻辑导致了所谓的“势力范围”（Spheres of Influence），即大国试图通过将其他大国尽可能地排除在外，来阻止它们威胁自己。在19世纪和20世纪，美国试图依据“门罗主义”将其他大国排除在美洲之外。希特勒也曾提出过欧洲的势力范围，称之为“德国门罗主义”。米尔斯海默教授等人也曾引用这种门罗主义的逻辑，来论证西方通过干涉俄罗斯的势力范围而激怒了俄罗斯，导致其入侵乌克兰。特朗普团队在其国家安全战略中写道，他们基本上是在回归门罗主义，有些人称之为“多诺主义”（Donno Doctrine）。韦斯·米切尔博士等人也运用这种逻辑，认为特朗普的战略行动确实根植于清晰且引人注目的宏大战略。他认为，俄罗斯和中国是美国天然的竞争对手，但美国已无力在全球范围内与它们作战，因此美国正实质上退守到其西半球。历史上，这种情况曾多次发生。委内瑞拉和格陵兰的行动都关乎确保关键资源的可及性，并阻止竞争对手获得这些资源。因此，我们迄今所见的，仅仅是对大国竞争的回归。美国迄今为止所做的一切，都只是为了国家利益。“灵活现实主义”是一种愤世嫉俗但并非不合逻辑的“美国优先”的解读。
Original English
The Trump team has written in the national security strategy that they are essentially returning to the Monroe Doctrine. Some call it the donno doctrine now, and some, like Doctor West Mitchell, have used this type of logic to argue that term strategic actions are in fact rooted in a clear and compelling logic, firmly grounded in the discipline of grand strategy. He says that Russia and China are the US natural great power competitors, but that the US no longer has the strength to fight them all over the world, and therefore the US is now essentially retreating to its own Western Hemisphere. Just this is done historically, many times before. Venezuela and Greenland are both about securing access to vital resources and, crucially, about denying them to competitors. So what we've seen so far is simply a return to great power competition. Everything the US has done so far is just in the national interest. Flexible realism is a cynical but not illogical take on America First.然而，对我而言，近期事件中有至少三个细节无法用“大国竞争”理论来解释。第一，抓捕马杜罗（Maduro）似乎不符合美国的国家利益，因为委内瑞拉的石油开采成本过高，而且中国并未从中获得多少利益。第二，吞并格陵兰并在此过程中彻底疏远欧洲盟友，也说不通，因为美国本已几乎拥有对该岛的无限军事准入，并能轻易获取其矿产资源。最后，如果特朗普真在遵循大国战略，为何他近期要严厉抨击印度的关税政策，而印度恰恰是中国在亚洲的天然竞争对手？
这时，戈达德和纽曼的“新王权主义”理论便显得更为合理。他们声称，我们今天看到的并非是领土国家或法治制度体系，而是一个围绕“统治集团”（Ruling Clicks）利益构建的国际政治体系。这个体系包括一个“个人化、绝对主权者”（Personalized, Absolute Sovereign）及其网络，涉及其家族、金融利益以及为其统治合法化的意识形态。他们称之为“新王权主义”，因为它并非回归“威斯特伐利亚秩序”下的大国政治，而是更可能回归到1648年《威斯特伐利亚和约》之前的世界秩序。要知道，《威斯特伐利亚和约》的达成是为了终结困扰神圣罗马帝国的各种毁灭性战争，而这些战争往往源于王位继承，而非国家利益。例如，荷兰对西班牙的独立战争，很大程度上是因为西班牙突然迎来了一位通过一系列联姻继承了荷兰的新国王。因此，在王权体系中，主要行动者并非国家，而是统治君主及其集团。故而，当时的多数战争并非关乎国家利益，而是为了增加王室财富和地位。同样，戈达德和纽曼认为，在马杜罗被捕、格陵兰事件以及对印度征收关税等案例中，关键并非国家利益，而是“一小撮超级精英”（Hyper Elites）、“集团式行动者”（Clique Actor）的利益集群。这驱动着一种截然不同的国际政治运作逻辑。例如，委内瑞拉的石油虽然对整个美国石油产业而言过于昂贵，但那些受益的特定美国炼油厂恰好由特朗普的“超级捐助者”（Mega-Donors）控制，如来自维多（Vidor）的约翰·埃迪森（John Edison）。同样，格陵兰的矿产对美国来说不足以疏远盟友，但对那些在格陵兰拥有广泛利益的亿万富翁，如罗纳德·劳德（Ronald Lauder，据报道他于2018年向特朗普提出了这一想法）而言，其价值可能足以支撑这一代价。最后，特朗普对印度的巨额关税，从大国博弈的角度看，疏远中国在亚洲的最大对手毫无意义。但如果考虑到印度总理莫迪（Modi）曾公开羞辱特朗普，声称与巴基斯坦在夏季的事件无关，那么印度关税的立即实施就变得更容易理解了。
Original English
However, to me there were at least three details about recent events that I could not explain with this theory. First, capturing Maduro does not seem to have been in US national interest, given that the oil there is too expensive to get out of the ground, and China did not get that much anyway. Second, annexing Greenland and in the process completely alienating European allies does not make much sense either, given that the US already had almost unlimited military access to the island and easy economic access to its minerals. Finally, if Trump was truly following a great power style strategy, why did he recently tear of the hell out of India, which is China's natural rival in Asia? This is where Godard and Newman's neo royalist theory starts making a lot more sense. They claim that what we are seeing today is, rather than a system of territorial nation states, rather than a system of rule governed institutions. What we see is a system of international politics that structured around the interest of ruling clicks, which include a personalized, absolute sovereign, and basically his network of whether or not his family, whether or not its financial interests, ideologues that legitimate his rule. They call this neorealism because rather than a return to great power politics of the Westphalian order, it would potentially be more like a return to the world order before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. You see, the Peace of Westphalia came about to put an end to various devastating wars that plagued the Holy Roman Empire, Wars that often came about because of royal succession, not the national interest. For example, the Dutch War of Independence against Spain arguably came about after that suddenly found themselves with a new Spanish king that had essentially inherited the Netherlands through a series of marriages. So in the royalist system, the main actors were not states, but rather ruling monarchs and their clicks. Therefore, most wars in those days were not about the national interest at all. They were about increasing royal wealth and status. Similarly, Godard and Newman argue that in the case of Maduro's capture, Greenland and the tariffs against India, it's not about national interest. It's about this small group of hyper elites, these this clique actor kind of clusters interest. And so that really drives a very different logic of how international politics functions. So while Venezuela's oil is too expensive to benefit the American oil industry as a whole, the specific American refineries that did benefit just so happened to be controlled by Trump Mega-Donors, such as John Edison from Vidor. Similarly, while Greenland's minerals are not worth enough for the US to alienate allies over, that price may well be worth it to billionaires with extensive interest in Greenland like Ronald Lauder, who reportedly put the idea into Trump's head in 2018. Finally, there's Trump's mega tariffs against India. Again, from a great Barr perspective, it makes no sense to alienate China's biggest Asian rival. But if you consider that Modi very publicly humiliated Trump by stating that he had nothing to do with Pakistani Indian fees in the summer, Indian tariffs immediately after that incident start making a lot more sense. But while neorealism can fill in a lot of gaps in their article, Goddard and Neumann do recognize that the Royals dynamics have always been in the background. After all, even during the height of great power politics, the 19th century Belgian King Leopold, for example, used the Belgian state to conquer and dominate his own personal colony in the Congo. And even today, Trump style personal rule is quite common. However, the difference between MBS or Orban and Trump is that they just don't have the material or status capability to transform the international system. And that's why Trump is so exceptional, because he has the U.S. military and the U.S. economy behind it. In other words, just as Westphalian style, great power politics were always still there in the background during, for example, the Cold War. Goddard and Neumann argue that royalist elements are and have always been a part of the international order as well.尽管“新王权主义”可以填补许多理论空白，但戈达德和纽曼也承认，王室动态始终存在于背景之中。毕竟，即使在大国政治的鼎盛时期，例如19世纪的比利时国王利奥波德（King Leopold），也曾利用比利时国家来征服和统治他在刚果的私人殖民地。即使在今天，特朗普式的个人统治也相当普遍。然而，与沙特王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼（MBS）或匈牙利总理欧尔班（Orban）不同的是，他们缺乏改变国际体系的物质或地位能力。而特朗普之所以如此特别，是因为他拥有美国军力和美国经济的支持。换言之，正如威斯特伐利亚式的大国政治在冷战期间始终存在于背景中一样，戈达德和纽曼认为，王室主义元素也一直存在于国际秩序之中。
因此，我的结论是，要真正理解全球秩序的走向，我们需要综合运用这三种视角。如果国际组织能够再次变得强大，全球秩序将再次变得可预测。但如果它们变得更弱，我们将看到更多的大国博弈，小国和中等强国（如乌克兰、委内瑞拉，甚至加拿大）将沦为大国争夺的棋子或战场，因为大国将不断寻求变得更强大，它们害怕一旦停止增长，就无法维持其大国地位。然而，如果大国由专制或非自由主义的统治者领导，那么我们将越来越多地看到类似特朗普“和平委员会”（Board of Peace）的事件——他计划即使不再担任美国总统也继续留任。在这种情况下，大国的影响力将不再用于国家利益，而是用于充实个人领导者及其集团的腰包，或提升他们在由全球统治者及其宫廷组成的新阶层中的社会地位，这些宫廷将像《权力的游戏》中的王室家族一样，为权力和地位展开激烈竞争。鉴于特朗普至少在未来三年内将掌权，并且极右翼民粹主义政党仍在许多其他中等强国暗中活动，我认为可以肯定地说，我们将目睹一个更加动荡的国际秩序的出现。无论是出于个人还是国家利益，关税、制裁甚至军事打击和战争，都将不幸地变得更加普遍。迄今为止的经济证据表明，这将使我们大多数人变得更贫穷、更安全感更低，尤其考虑到，与19世纪不同，大国现在拥有只需点击按钮就能毁灭我们所有人的武器。尽管如此，情况并非必然如此。例如，有人认为，在滑铁卢战役后维也纳会议期间，现实主义的回归似乎不可避免，但事实并未发生。同样，谁知道呢？也许特朗普的继任者会再次看到自由国际秩序的价值，并与盖特纳（Geithner）等人一起，在刚刚告别的秩序废墟上，重建一个新的自由国际秩序。