Law of the jungle: How the actions of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu are weakening the rules-based order

The world is rapidly sinking into the abyss of the law of the jungle, a savage state in which shared rules evaporate, common institutions become utterly irrelevant, and only force — which is being used with increasing brazenness — matters. The planet has never been a gentle place, but in the decades following the end of the Cold War, there were some elements of restraint that are now being destroyed by the unbridled actions of figures like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu — among others — bringing about a return to a level of brutality reminiscent of another era.

The war launched by the United States and Israel against the Iranian regime is the latest step in this worsening dynamic. The comparison with other U.S. wars in the region is illuminating. The 1990 Gulf War was a legal operation, sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was an illegal operation, but it is worth remembering — as Manuel Muñiz, rector of Spain’s IE University, notes in a phone conversation — the effort that the attackers made to obtain some form of legal endorsement, even if it relied on disgraceful lies. Today, Trump and Netanyahu show utter contempt for international law and institutions; they are not even trying to convince anyone with fabricated evidence.

Meanwhile, Putin is not only illegally invading a country — as the United States did in Iraq — but it is also crossing the red line of seeking the annexation of Ukraine, a terrible Pandora’s box. The horror of Israel’s actions in Gaza — an indescribable form of collective punishment with no possibility of escape for civilians — further exposes the extent of the breakdown driven by those who wield military power. Another historical comparison, highlighted by Jeremy Cliffe, editorial director at the ECFR think tank, also illustrates this decline: the vast difference between the level of international attention devoted to the crisis in Darfur (Sudan) at the beginning of the century — with significant involvement from the U.N. and peacekeepers — and the current atmosphere of indifference and helplessness surrounding today’s crisis.

These actions illuminate a change of era. The previous one was marked by abuses and heinous crimes, from the Rwandan genocide to the wars in the Congo and the Balkans. But it was also a time in which institutions, norms, and multilateral processes were established or strengthened, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Criminal Court, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The hegemonic power — the United States — committed serious abuses during that period, but adopted a more restrained stance in several respects compared to previous eras — and to the present. At the same time, it assumed the burden of certain responsibilities: providing some stabilizing global public goods and helping build multilateral frameworks. It was not out of generosity, but because it believed it was in its interest. Not anymore.

Muñiz, who is also a professor of International Relations and a former Spanish secretary of state for foreign affairs, points out that the world is returning to a sad normality. “What has been anomalous, atypical, are the last 30 years of hyperglobalization, strong integration in many sectors at the international level, extremely high mobility of people between countries, a very strong commitment to the multilateral order, and the expansion of its powers and functions,” says Muñiz. “That is atypical in the history of international relations; the norm is a more fragmented, more atomized, more multipolar, more disordered world.”

The rector of IE University believes that among all the forces shaping the new scenario, two stand out.

The first is the dynamic of fragmentation. “It’s a political fragmentation, reflected in a weakening of alliances, a decline in the reliability of bilateral relations that existed until now, and a more common use of force,” says Muñiz. “But it’s also economic, through tariffs and other means. And in the multilateral sphere, because all the institutions of the international framework are being weakened.” The second predominant factor that Muñiz points to is the change in the position and attitude of the United States.

The United States breaks boundaries

Washington’s shift is key. There is a long-term dynamic at play, one that involves a reassessment of U.S. national interests in light of the changing global balance of power, especially given the rise of China. But Trumpism represents not only a tremendous accelerator of some trends, but also a disruptive force in others.

The pattern is evident, beyond the war against Iran, and can be seen in the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela; in the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific; in the attempt to dismantle international institutions; in bypassing U.S. Congress, whether to launch military wars or tariff wars; and in the blatant interventionism in other countries’ domestic politics — whether by supporting Argentine President Javier Milei with a bailout in Argentina or by seeking to “cultivate resistance” within the European Union, as explicitly stated in the recent National Security Strategy.

The White House is acting without restraint, breaking limits in the pursuit of its interests while simultaneously weakening both the internal democratic framework and international legal structures. “It is not only that the United States is abandoning [the previous order], but that in some areas it is actively dismantling it,” Muñiz says.

The rector emphasizes the reasons for this shift. “The process of political polarization in the Western world leads to the rise of forces at the extremes of the spectrum, especially on the right, which basically draws from nationalism and opposition to international integration in trade, rules, and institutions,”says the former secretary of state. “It has a strong anti-elite component — anti-political, diplomatic, and intellectual elites — who were fundamental in building the previous international order. So, when these political forces influence or even dictate foreign policy, they end up producing a significant revision of the international order.”

Putin’s project for Russia

The breakdown driven by Trump adds to — and at times seems coordinated with — the one undertaken by Putin, with the large‑scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022 as its major symbolic milestone. The Kremlin has gone straight for the jugular of an order that enshrines the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, that conceives the use of force only in legitimate self‑defense or with authorization from the Security Council, and that places universal human rights at its core. All of this stands in the way of the Putinist project.

“His project is an obsession with restoring, maintaining, and consolidating Russia’s great‑power status — its prominent place among the major powers,” says Carmen Claudín, a non‑resident senior researcher at the CIDOB think tank and a specialist in the post‑Soviet space. “To achieve this, he is willing to use every available mechanism. In domestic politics, that means the total repression of any dissenting position — not to mention divergent ones,” the expert argues. In foreign policy, efforts are directed at subjugating the countries that Moscow considers part of its sphere of influence.

“This logic of re‑establishing a sphere of influence lies at the heart of the project to recover great‑power status,” the expert continues. “When Putin, [Sergei] Lavrov, and others complain that Russia has not been treated well, that it has not been shown the respect it deserves, what they mean is that they are not being recognized as having the right to their own zone of influence. In the Russian logic, the European Union is itself a sphere of influence, and they want one of their own. They do not care that EU countries freely choose to join, whereas in their sphere, countries should do so by force,” Claudín says.

All of the Kremlin’s actions are, therefore, an unabashed assault on the core values of a rules‑based multilateral order. What Moscow wants is a multilateral order grounded in force, so that it can use it to achieve the reshaping of the international landscape it seeks — one that the law does not endorse, since sovereignty implies the freedom to choose one’s foreign policy, and each country is free to decide whether to join one international organization or another.

Israel, another crucial player

The Israeli government is another crucial player in the world’s drift toward brutality. Of course, it is surrounded by savage actors in a highly tense environment, fraught with complex historical resentments. There is no doubt that Hamas’s attack in October 2023 was a horrific act of terrorism that justified a response in self-defense. But the scale of the response is difficult to match in modern history.

The matter is in the hands of international justice. Netanyahu, like Putin, is the subject of an arrest warrant, but — in another sign of the world’s slide into the law of the jungle — even countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court (ICC) have expressed their refusal to execute the warrant, despite it being their obligation. Meanwhile, the United States is pursuing sanctions against members of the ICC.

Netanyahu’s government carries out airstrikes wherever it sees fit, expands settlements wherever it sees fit, and imposes oppression and collective punishment. Its regional enemies are forces with a long record of reprehensible actions, but Israel’s power gives it a far greater reach in its capacity for destruction — whether of lives or of order.

China’s revisionism

Given this situation, China’s leaders are striving to portray themselves as responsible actors, who do not resort to violence and are opposed to the law of the jungle, advocating instead a rules-based world. This image is only partially true.

“China is a revisionist country because it wants to change the international order. However, its revisionism is cautious, not explosive,” says Rafael Dezcallar, Spain’s ambassador to China from 2018 to 2024. “It’s not a country that is very inclined to carry out the kind of military operations that, for example, Putin or Trump have used. So, of course, faced with such extreme examples, the impression that China gives is indeed that of a more stable and responsible country. But China wants to change the international order,” Dezcallar says.

And the way in which China wants to change the international order represents breaks with the ideal of a rules-based world, because Beijing only wants certain kinds of rules while rejecting those that have universal value and are linked to fundamental rights.

“China wants to change the order, among other things, because it believes it was created when the West was very strong, that the balance of power has shifted, and that now China is stronger and wants its values ​​and political principles to be more present in the international order, for example, the issue of human rights. It denies that there are universal values; it believes that each country has the right to follow its own path,” observes Dezcallar, author of the book The Rise of China.

China also shows little inclination to respect rules when they hinder its strategic objectives — whether international norms regarding the control of disputed waters or bilateral agreements on the status of Hong Kong. Moreover, although without open military support, it is fueling Putin’s brutal assault on the rules‑based order through trade and technological assistance.

“The reason [for this support] is that Russia is an ally of China in its attempt to change the international order,” Dezcallar continues. “When Putin visited Beijing in February 2022, three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, they signed a bilateral declaration calling for a different, new international order in which each country has the right to follow its own path. Russia and China are aligned in their desire to end the rules-based international order created in 1945 and 1989, which they consider to be dominated by the West. Again, China’s support is cautious, because it hasn’t crossed certain red lines, hasn’t sent weapons, and hasn’t openly supported the Russian military industry, although many believe it is sending dual-use goods. But without a doubt, China is benefiting enormously from the war in Ukraine, and not only because it is supporting someone it considers an ally. The war in Ukraine is weakening the United States, especially in Europe.”

Europe’s difficult adaptation

The European bloc rhetorically presents itself as a great defender of a rules-based multilateral order. There is little doubt that, in strategic terms, such an order is in its interest, since it lacks the autonomous military and technological power to navigate safely in a world governed by the law of the jungle. However, a set of factors has meant that, on many occasions, the bloc has not acted consistently with the values it claims to uphold. The EU’s passivity during the Gaza massacre has earned it harsh criticism across much of the world.

Jeremy Cliffe, editorial director of the ECFR think tank, points to several important elements for understanding the situation, which can be summed up as a difficult path of adaptation to a new era.

“The EU is fundamentally an economic construct. From this stems a strong respect for economic multilateralism, trade agreements, and so on,” says Cliffe. “Over time, it has been developing a geopolitical profile, an attempt to project that respect for rules into the realm of security affairs. It is evolving, but it was not built as an organization designed to uphold the international order.” This reality complicates its action in that sphere.

The complex process of adaptation to a new era is also a key lens through which to understand the positioning of a crucial country, Germany, which — despite professing for decades a genuine devotion to the rules‑based international order — has sent puzzling signals both on the Gaza issue and on Iran, with the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, declaring in the early hours of the offensive that framing the offensive in terms of international law contributes little.

“At the forefront is the question of Germany’s identity, built on the lessons of the past, and encompassing its commitment to multilateralism and international law, as well as its support for Israel. The problem is that Israel has changed a great deal. And so these two elements of German identity are now in tension,” says Cliffe.

In the foreground, the expert says, “we have to take into account that Germany was somewhat infantilized geopolitically during its early decades, and then, after the fall of the wall, there was this sense of the end of history. Since 2022, Berlin has been trying to adapt to a time in which power is what determines rights — to an era of impunity, as David Miliband puts it. I think Merz’s comments had to do with a desire to show a willingness to adapt to realism. But his more recent statements show that he is realizing that supporting that war as a way of adapting to realism is a mistake.”

There are further problems: the sense of danger stemming from Putin’s aggressiveness inhibits some Europeans from openly opposing actions by Trump’s United States that undermine the rules‑based order, because they fear a complete loss of U.S. protection.

In this complex landscape of adaptation, Europe is still not an effective bulwark in defense of a rules‑based multilateral order.

The five actors highlighted in this analysis stand out for their relevance. Of course, there are other important ones — for example, India, Japan, or Brazil — that have the potential to make significant contributions to building a rules‑based world. The vast majority, however, have limited capacity to influence events and much to lose in a world governed by force. Reconfiguring mechanisms of cooperation so that these limited individual capacities converge into a collective front is a fundamental part of the struggle over the world’s future direction.

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