The president’s indifference to domestic legal constraints is reflected in his actions outside the U.S.
By MAX BOOT
Washington Post
February 9, 2025
President Donald Trump’s contempt for the rule of law in America — and the judges who enforce it — is by now well-established. Whether seeking to deport migrants without hearings or refusing to spend appropriated funds or unilaterally tearing down the East Wing of the White House, Trump has shown scant regard for legal limits on his authority.
Given this domestic track record, it’s hardly surprising that Trump has shown similar indifference to international law and the institutions that try to enforce it. Admittedly, the United States has a long regard of ignoring international statutes when convenient; the U.S. has been accused of flouting the law in the past, from the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But since 1945, the U.S., while guilty of hypocrisy and inconsistency, has generally been on the side of a rules-based international order. Some of its proudest moments have come when it has helped the victims of aggression, including South Korea in 1950, Bosnia in 1995 and Ukraine in 2022.
Trump, however, seems bent on destroying the very foundations of a rules-based order. He told the New York Times last month, “I don’t need international law.” The only limit on his authority abroad he recognizes is his “own morality.” (Given his long record of amorality, that’s scant comfort.) In a similar vein, one of Trump’s top aides, Stephen Miller, has dismissed talk of “international niceties,” insisting in a recent chilling CNN interview that “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
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