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Trump’s war on the international order threatens us all

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by David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler, opinion contributors - 05/17/26 8:00 AM ET

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by David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler, opinion contributors - 05/17/26 8:00 AM ET

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While the world focuses on the war with Iran, the Trump administration has quietly accelerated its attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Earlier this month, the U.S. military destroyed three boats in five days, bringing the total to 57, with almost 200 people killed. The strikes, which legal experts consider illegal extrajudicial killings under international law — and murder under U.S. law — are part of a systematic effort by the administration to normalize the unilateral use of force as an instrument of foreign policy. In the process, the U.S. is alienating allies, undermining the international order it took the lead in creating, and weakening its legitimacy both at home and abroad.

Under the United Nations Charter, states may not use force abroad unless authorized by the Security Council or undertaken in self-defense against an armed attack. The Trump administration claims the U.S. is effectively at war with Latin American drug cartels because they “illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year.” But drug trafficking, however devastating its consequences, is criminal activity that calls for a law enforcement response — arrests, charges and trials — not deadly military strikes. 

By blurring the distinction between war and policing, the administration is eroding limits on when states may use lethal force.

Administration officials have increasingly framed international relations as a system governed by the power to coerce. When U.S. forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, for example, President Trump declared his capture the product of “the iron laws that have always determined global power.” His repeated threats to take over Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, and use military force against Cuba, Colombia and Mexico have reinforced global fears that the U.S. is a hegemon run amok.

“I don’t need international law,” Trump told The New York Times. The only limit on his authority to act, he declared, is “my own morality.”

This worldview has also shaped the administration’s approach to Iran. But U.S. claims about “Iran’s malign aggression over decades,” and the possibility that it might someday acquire a nuclear weapon, fall far short of any recognized legal grounds for exercising the right of self-defense.

What’s worse, the U.S. seems prepared not only to launch illegal wars, but to fight them illegally, too.

Early in the conflict with Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared that the U.S. would fight on its own terms, with “no stupid rules of engagement” or “politically correct wars.” Instead, he promised to “untie the hands of our warfighters” for “maximum lethality.” Hegseth subsequently vowed to show “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” even though it is a war crime, “especially forbidden” under the laws of war, to “declare that no quarter will be given.”

Those laws also prohibit intentional strikes on civilian objects, unless they are being used for military purposes. Yet the U.S. has attacked bridges, power plants, universities, and steel and petrochemical facilities.

After claiming U.S. strikes had “totally demolished” most of Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export hub, Trump suggested the U.S. might hit it “a few more times just for fun.” He also threatened to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age,” leaving critical infrastructure “burning, exploding, and never to be used again.”

Last month, Trump warned that if Iran did not agree to peace terms, “a whole civilization will die tonight.” This month he told reporters that “if there’s no ceasefire, you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.” 

Meanwhile, the Defense Department has systematically weakened mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with the laws of war. Hegseth has fired the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force, removed other senior military lawyers, and eliminated “civilian environment teams” tasked with limiting harm to noncombatants.

The international order created after World War II rested on two central principles: the ban on the unilateral use of force at the heart of the U.N. Charter and the rejection of war crimes and crimes against humanity memorialized at the Nuremberg trials. If t