At the recent NATO summit, Donald Trump delivered a pointed critique of the alliance. He expressed deep disappointment with the organization, questioned why the United States shoulders such enormous defense costs while allies contribute less, renewed his interest in acquiring Greenland, and dismissed the Ukraine conflict as irrelevant to American interests. He also criticized European energy and immigration policies and took shots at Spain.
Yet despite these provocations, Trump emerged from the gathering claiming victory. "It was a great meeting, there was a lot of love in that room, a lot of unity," he declared when proceedings wrapped. The NATO leadership had treated him with uncommon deference and respect.
The disconnect reveals something fundamental about how Trump operates on the world stage. His leverage does not stem from commanding the world's most powerful nation. His erratic tariffs, military ventures, and other unilateral actions have actually weakened American standing globally. His base, meanwhile, shows signs of fatigue after foreign entanglements, inflation, and other policy fallouts. Strategic brilliance plays no role either.
Trump's actual power springs from a singular source: his demonstrated willingness to shatter the norms, rules, and laws that have traditionally bound American presidents. He pursues wealth, power, and retribution without constraint. World leaders grant him deference not out of admiration but out of fear of what he might do without it.
Consider the mechanics at play. In a functioning community bound by trust, the first person to violate that trust gains an asymmetric advantage. A thief in a town where no one locks doors can rob at will. The cost to him is minimal. The cost to everyone else is enormous once they realize the threat and rush to install locks, change their routines, and live in perpetual vigilance.
The thief profits from the destruction of trust but bears none of the downstream expenses. That calculus, played out across the largest stage imaginable, defines Trump's presidency. He shatters international norms and institutions built on the assumption that no American president would go as far as he does. NATO, FIFA, the Justice Department, the electoral system itself, all rest on shared understandings that Trump has shown himself willing to violate.
Other leaders accommodate him because breaking with him carries unpredictable risks. He is unconstrained by treaties, by precedent, by law. Whether discussing NATO obligations, Iran policy, election integrity, or personal enrichment, Trump operates in a zone where normal rules do not apply. The key to his influence is that most people cannot fathom a world without standards at all. This difficulty, paradoxically, is precisely what he exploits.
His approach transcends simple unethical behavior. Unethical conduct implies a breach of accepted standards. Trump operates outside that framework entirely. He is amoral, not immoral. He calculates only what benefits him and at what cost to others. Ethics itself, with its emphasis on collective judgment and shared values, has no purchase on his worldview.
As president, Trump has access to far larger norms to demolish and vastly greater rewards for doing so than any small-time operator. The institutions that have anchored American power and credibility abroad have been damaged by his willingness to treat them as expendable. When he departs office, the repair work will fall to everyone else.
The bill for restoring trust, rebuilding institutions, and defending against future norm violations will be enormous. The United States and its allies will spend resources and political capital installing countless locks on countless doors, only to discover that the very concept of shared trust has been fundamentally altered.
Author James Rodriguez: "Trump has weaponized the gap between what traditional leaders thought was unthinkable and what he's actually willing to do, and it works because the entire system was built on the assumption he wouldn't go there."
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