Introduction
For two centuries, the Monroe Doctrine has served as the foundational, if often unspoken, scripture of U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. Declaring the Americas off-limits to European colonial interference, it evolved from a defensive proclamation into a justification for hegemony. Today, a new paradigm is being articulated—not from the State Department, but from the campaign trail and social media pulpit of Donald Trump. This “Trump Corollary” presents a radical revision: not merely a hemisphere for Americans, but a world entirely for America First. Its central tenet is the explicit rejection of multilateral constraints, viewing international law and institutions not as frameworks for stability, but as direct impediments to national interest. This ideological shift prompts a grave question: are we witnessing not just a challenge to the post-1945 world order, but the active unraveling of international law itself?
Understanding the Landscape
To grasp the Corollary, one must first understand the Doctrine it seeks to update. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine was about sphere of influence. The 1904 Roosevelt Corollary added a policing right, turning the U.S. into the hemisphere’s "international police power." These were regional strategies of a rising power.
The Trump Corollary, by contrast, is global in ambition and transactional in essence. It argues that:
All alliances and agreements are purely conditional, based on immediate cost-benefit analysis (e.g., NATO burden-sharing, defense pacts with South Korea and Japan).
International law is legitimate only when it aligns with U.S. interests. Institutions like the International Criminal Court (ICC) are deemed “illegitimate” if they investigate Americans or allies.
Sovereignty is absolute for the U.S., but permeable for others. This echoes the Monroe Doctrine’s unilateral right to intervene, but applies it globally—from threatening tariffs on allies to engaging in summit diplomacy with adversaries like North Korea without preconditions.
Power is derived from bilateral leverage, not multilateral consensus. The goal is not to reform the system but to operate outside it, making deals from a position of perceived strength.
This represents a shift from liberal institutionalism—the belief that rules-based order benefits all—to a form of neo-sovereigntism where might makes right, and the greatest might negotiates its own rules.
Case Studies
The theoretical becomes concrete in practice:
The Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA): The unilateral withdrawal in 2018, against the advice of European allies and despite UN verification of Iranian compliance, demonstrated a fundamental disregard for multilateral painstakingly negotiated agreements. It signaled that U.S. signatures are ephemeral, tied to administrations, not enduring state commitments.
Trade Wars and the WTO: The imposition of tariffs on allies and rivals alike under Section 232 "national security" claims deliberately circumvented World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. By paralyzing the WTO's Appellate Body, the U.S. disabled the very mechanism for resolving such disputes, crippling the cornerstone of global trade law.
The "America First" COVID-19 Response: The competition for medical supplies, attempts to acquire exclusive rights to vaccines, and withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) during a pandemic highlighted a rejection of global public goods and collective action—a core premise of international cooperation in law.
Recognition of Sovereignty (Golan Heights, Jerusalem): These moves, while popular domestically, explicitly ignored UN Security Council resolutions and an international legal consensus on occupied territories, prioritizing bilateral diplomacy over established multilateral frameworks.
Implications and Consequences
The ripple effects of this Corollary are destabilizing:
Normative Erosion: If the world’s traditional rule-setter consistently flouts the rules, it provides a license for others. China can point to U.S. unilateralism to justify its actions in the South China Sea. Russia can cite it for its annexation of Crimea. The norm against territorial conquest weakens.
Alliance Anxiety: The conditional nature of U.S. security guarantees forces allies to hedge. This drives nuclear proliferation fears (e.g., South Korea) and pushes nations like Germany and France to call for "strategic autonomy" from the U.S., fracturing the Western bloc.
The Rise of Authoritarian Coordination: As the U.S. abdicates its role as a champion of democratic norms, authoritarian states like Russia, China, and Iran find greater space to coordinate, promoting an alternative, sovereignty-centric model of world order that is hostile to human rights and multilateralism.
Institutional Irrelevance: Organizations from the UN to NATO are deliberately weakened, not through reform, but through neglect, defunding, and rhetorical contempt, creating a vacuum no other actor is fully equipped to fill.
Theoretical Analysis
The Trump Corollary is not an aberration but the ultimate expression of several realist and critical theories. It is Realism stripped of its strategic patience: where classical realists like Hans Morgenthau acknowledged the role of morality and diplomacy in moderating power, the Corollary is purely Hobbesian—a world of perpetual, zero-sum competition. It also aligns with Schmittian concepts of the political, where the friend-enemy distinction is paramount, and international law is a mere façade for this struggle. Furthermore, it validates Post-Colonial critiques that have long argued that the "rules-based order" was a Western hegemonic project. Now, the hegemon itself is admitting the game was always rigged, opting for bare-knuckle power instead.
The Role of International Organizations
International bodies are now in a defensive crouch. Their role is being forcibly transformed from architects of global governance to arenas for geopolitical contestation. Their relevance depends on their utility to great powers. For instance:
The UN Security Council becomes a theater for demonstrating veto power rather than achieving consensus.
NATO is reduced to a transactional accounting alliance, its Article 5 mutual defense guarantee—once sacred—questioned for its dollar value.
The ICC and Human Rights Bodies face intensified attack, branded as tools of political warfare.
Their survival may depend on their ability to serve as neutral platforms for conflict management and technical coordination (e.g., aviation, shipping) where even rival powers see practical value.
Strategies in a Post-Legal World?
If the Corollary becomes a sustained U.S. policy stance, states must adapt:
For Middle Powers (EU, Japan, Canada, Australia): The strategy is coalitional minilateralism. Building issue-based coalitions (e.g., the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership continued without the U.S.) to uphold rules in specific domains.
For Adversaries (China, Russia): The strategy is opportunistic norm entrepreneurship. Filling voids left by the U.S., promoting alternative institutions (BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), and defining new "rules" that favor authoritarian governance.
For the Global South: The strategy is omnialignment—a flexible, non-ideological approach of engaging with all powers for specific benefits, avoiding permanent entanglements in a new cold war.
For the U.S. Itself: A nation cannot permanently be transactioneer-in-chief without sacrificing long-term strategic trust. The ultimate strategy must involve a recalibration: can it champion a revised rules-based order that fairly addresses legitimate grievances (on trade, sovereignty) without demolishing the entire edifice?
Conclusion and Summary
The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine does not merely signal the end of international law in a literal sense—treaties and courts will persist. Rather, it threatens to end the belief in international law as a meaningful constraint on power, particularly that of the strongest. It represents the potential triumph of a voluntarist, contract-based system over a constitutional, rule-based one.
The legacy of the Monroe Doctrine was a hemisphere under U.S. influence. The legacy of the Trump Corollary could be a world where law follows power, not governs it; where instability is chronic because agreements have no anchor; and where the very concept of a "community of nations" is replaced by a brutal marketplace of competing nationalisms.
International law has always been imperfect and reflective of power dynamics. Its obituary has been written before. Yet, its resilience stems from the collective recognition that even a flawed system of rules is preferable to the chaos of pure force. The ultimate test of our era is whether that collective recognition can survive the explicit rejection of it by the nation that once did the most to build it. The Corollary is not an ending, but a dangerous, clarifying crisis—one that will define whether the 21st century is governed by law, or dictated by the raw will of the powerful.
