For generations, global politics have assumed a few things to be true: National governments hold exclusive sway within their borders; all states are, in legal terms, equal (if not equally powerful); and states are the primary units of geopolitical power.
Those norms grew out of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and were strengthened in the aftermath of World War II. But some political scientists argue that this system is now being gradually supplanted by a competing world order that turns on the needs of powerful elites, rather than national interests.
Under this “neo-royalist” order — so named for the royal families and dynasties that embraced similar dynamics 400 years ago — nation-states and national governments aren’t the primary actors on the world stage anymore. Instead, the international system centers on competing “cliques,” or networks, of wealthy, powerful people — frequently, politicians, business executives and military figures — who array themselves around a central leader.
Neo-royalists don’t believe that all states are equal, and they don’t conform to international institutions or rules. “It’s misleading if you think of it just as corruption or just a degenerate category of neoliberalism,” the political scientist Abe Newman told my colleague Joshua Keating. “It’s an entirely different system of how actors distribute power amongst themselves.”
Trump is a poster boy for the neo-royalist world order, and not merely due to his fondness for shiny things. As Keating explained in detail last month, the president’s reliance on a tight circle of relatives and allies, and his tendency to mix his private interests with national policy, both recall a (much) earlier era of foreign policy.
They could also help explain many of the president’s apparently irrational foreign policy decisions. Why, for instance, would Trump undertake a domestically unpopular, illegal operation to depose a foreign leader without a clear upside for either the US war on drugs or US oil industry?
Why threaten to annex Greenland from long-time ally Denmark, when that relationship already amply provides for US national security?
Why pardon the former president of Honduras, sentenced to 45 years in US prison for his role in a massive cocaine trafficking scheme?
In a neo-royalist world, at least, the answer is obvious: Trump is seeking status and wealth for himself and his retinue, more than he’s pursuing any broader national interest. “The key is that a neo-royalist order is not yet consolidated,” Newman wrote Monday. “It will face uncertainty both domestically and internationally. But only if actors recognize what is happening.”
