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Over eighty years, the US-Europe alliance was based in a common promise to mutual security and a common set of values centered on democracy, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

That defining era was set in motion in the spring of 1947 during a concise speech by US President Truman, who committed American support to defend Europe from further expansion by the Soviet Union.

The United States led the creation of NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the world body. It bound itself into what later became known as the "rules-based international order", a system where sovereign states committed to shared responsibilities designed to defend free nations from adversarial dictatorships.

Now, the newly published US security doctrine, issued in winter, signals that, from the administration's perspective, that joint undertaking has concluded; much of what the world assumed about the US's global function is a thing of the past.

The document discusses the "alleged 'rules-based international order'", putting the latter phrase in quotation marks: a form of dismissal through typography.

An Ideological Turn

Vice-President JD Vance cautioned America's allies in Europe of this looming transformation during a address at the security forum in Munich in the first quarter of 2025.

"He told them directly that the genuine danger to Europe was not emanating from Russia but from internal sources - from those censoring free speech, quashing dissent and thereby weakening European democracy," he argued. He was sharply condemnatory of the "progressive liberal establishment."

A prominent French newspaper described the address as a declaration of "value-based struggle" against Europe.

The recent NSS elevates Vance's comments, converting them from rhetoric into official doctrine.

"Certainly America is no longer the country that advocated for the universal principles that have been established since the post-1945 era," observes a former senior official from the US State Department and a policy institute. "It is transitioning to a very different place."

Consequently, if the world is indeed abandoning that post-war framework, what is it moving towards? And what are the consequences for the international system, and in particular for Europe?

''The Global Context Has Changed'

"Global bodies, particularly the United Nations, have been marked by dramatically anti-American sentiment, and have been ineffective for our or any other national goal," argues a analyst at a prominent right-wing think tank.

From her perspective - having once been Deputy National Security Adviser to the former President - change to the international order is unavoidable in a changing world.

"Another key point we face is that when that aforementioned post-war framework was established after the World War Two, just eight decades past, Chinese power was not a significant issue. We are living in a changed global landscape."

This rules-based order, constructed in the years following the global conflict, was the legacy of a generation that had experienced the devastation of imperial competition and was resolved to avert its recurrence.

That order, flawed and incomplete though it unquestionably remained, was the product of that shared history.

Yet, the NSS explicitly states that Washington's approach veered off course in the subsequent decades - and it criticizes what it calls "American foreign policy elites."

"They tied American policy to a array of supranational bodies, some of which are driven by open hostility to the US and many by a transnationalism that openly aims to dissolve national sovereignty," the document states.

It indicates that going forward, the US will seek to roll back the reach of international organizations.

Sovereignty as the Core Principle

"The basic building block of global politics is and will remain the nation-state… We stand for the national prerogatives of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most interfering international agencies…"

In another section, reflecting on the "distribution of global influence", it states: "The disproportionate power of bigger, wealthier, and more powerful countries is a timeless truth of international relations."

Russian leadership reacted to the review with praise, stating that much of it was consistent with Moscow's own viewpoint.

"In my view the leaders of the US, China, and Russia and their supportive regimes are seeking to revert to an era of Great Power politics," argues a ex-chief of the UK's armed forces.

Conversely, a leading academic in War Studies believes the new Security Strategy is not such a fundamental shift with the past as it could be interpreted.

"We must be cautious about the term, which is a concept that became popular in the last ten years," he contends. "Consider the past and you find many infringements of the rules, Southeast Asian conflicts for example. So there's a certain nostalgic idealization about the past at times and everyone should be wary of sentimentality for what was a complicated history."

A Forceful Return of Sovereign Power

The US's covert action in the Venezuelan capital Caracas that led to the detention of the country's leader Maduro is an initial instance of this more muscular assertion of independent action.

Some legal scholars have raised doubts about the lawfulness of the government's operation, arguing it may have violated UN charters governing the military intervention.

American officials argue its actions were legally justified.

"Under American law it certainly was [legal]," a previous senior Pentagon official has stated. "Maduro - most of our European friends have not accepted his authority so he is an unlawful ruler. Because of that he is denied the usual immunities that national leaders would have...given constitutional provisions that exist in the United States, that would take precedence over anything the UN says."

The NSS declares, for the United States, the right to be the pre-eminent power in the Western Hemisphere, and to encourage its Latin American and Caribbean neighbours into alignment with Washington's interests.

This is a muscular reassertion of the