THE GLOBAL RULE OF LAW IS NOT COLLAPSING – TRUMP IS THE LONE PROBLEM AND HE CAN BE DEFEATED

By Guardian - Simon Tisdall - Sun 25 Jan 2026 13.27 GMT

The president’s approval ratings are plummeting and most Americans see him as an aberration. It is now up to them to curtail his despotic reign. Donald Trump is a monster, and a stupid one at that – as his foul slander of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan shows.

His bid to seize loyal ally Denmark’s sovereign territory; his norm-shattering, profoundly ignorant speech in Davos last week; and his contemptuous bullying of UK and EU leaders have definitively demonstrated what an existential, unappeasable, unspeakable menace the 47th US president truly is.

All the post-Davos talk is about what the UK, the EU and Nato must do in future to resist and constrain Trump, and how to counter his attempts to demolish the global rules-based order. Yet a sense of proportion is required. If his policies and posturing are removed from the equation, it’s clear that the unedifying but familiar postwar world of great power rivalries and de-facto spheres of influence remains largely unchanged. Continuities outnumber ruptures. It’s also clear this crisis is not ultimately one Europe can solve.

Trump and Trump alone is the principal, pressing problem. And Trump is a made-in-America monster. It’s up to Americans to un-make him and set things straight – which they surely will, sooner or later.

The still-festering Greenland crisis is the latest example – after Venezuela, Gaza and Iran – of Trump’s neo-imperial overreach. If he honestly wanted to boost Arctic security, he only had to ask. Denmark is already treaty-bound to accept more, bigger US bases. Nato allies and the EU are keen to help. But what Washington’s kraken really wants is to gobble up the entire territory and its resources, regardless of Greenlanders’ wishes.

Trump’s excruciatingly undignified, whingeing performance in Davos revealed a man whose egotism knows no limits, whose overweening ambition to boss the world is spinning out of control. This is no exaggeration. How else to understand his new “board of peace” – a $1bn club for dictators, with himself as chair-for-life, that is plainly intended to supplant the UN?

Trump’s strong-arm tactics, including the usual tariff threats, caused something close to panic among European leaders. The reaction of the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen was typical. “The shift in the international order is not only seismic, it is permanent,” she warned. The broad consensus – Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, was eloquently apocalyptic – is that the world has changed, for ever and for the worse, and that the only remaining rule is “might makes right”.

This doomsday lament is exaggerated, lacking in perspective. Historically speaking, the UN-led rules-based order has always been a take-it-or-leave it choice for the great powers of the day. The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a case in point. What made the system work, most of the time, was the rational pursuit of national self-interest. The key difference today is that Trump behaves irrationally, imperilling US interests and values and those of its allies.

Most Americans now appear to share Europe’s view of Trump as a dangerous embarrassment. On almost every issue, domestic and foreign, his disapproval ratings are hitting new highs. In Davos, Trump regurgitated the lie that he won a “landslide” in 2024. In truth, he edged the election with 1.5% of the popular vote. Out of a registered electorate of 174 million, about 97 million voted for somebody else or not at all. Today, the anti-Trump majority is vastly larger.

What’s to be done? November’s midterm elections may rein him in – although they feel a long way off. Trump’s mishandling of the economy, particularly his tariff wars, is fuelling an “affordability” crisis whose existence he denies. His violent anti-migrant paramilitary assaults on US cities are producing scenes reminiscent of the 2024 movie Civil War. Trump tramples daily on the US constitution, the separation of powers, representative democracy and civil liberties.

Americans did not vote for this. Nor did US allies such as Britain. Despite its unfailingly polite, patient diplomacy and personal hospitality towards Trump, Keir Starmer’s government has been repeatedly betrayed or undercut over Ukraine, big-tech regulation, trade, climate policy, Gaza aid, Palestinian statehood and now the UK record in Afghanistan.

It’s easy to understand why western politicians fret. Greenland is far from settled. Trump and Nato are at breaking point. The struggle for a just peace in Ukraine is at dire risk of being lost. Trump’s “historic” Middle East peace plan fatally ignores the central issue: Palestine’s independence. His personal disdain for sovereign borders, the UN charter and international law encourages fellow autocrats everywhere.

Last week’s traumas may have been formative. It is now widely agreed that Europe must do much more to defend and promote its own security and values as a front-row geopolitical player. In public, the anti-Trump tone toughened considerably. Appeasers took a back seat as shock and anger turned to defiance. Europe pushed back hard against Trump’s “coercion”. One diplomat called it a “Rubicon moment”. But there are limits to what it can do.

Hope lies in the fact that most Americans agree Trump is a mistake, if not an outright, repulsive aberration. Polls show most remain firmly pro-Europe and pro-Nato. And most surely realise this all-round damaging White House travesty cannot continue unchecked.

For the sake of their friends, for the sake of global order, for their own sanity, the US’s silenced majority must now move with speed, determination, unity – and, if required, an unaccustomed degree of constitutional flexibility – to curtail his despotic reign before matters deteriorate further.

Citizens of the Republic! Impeach Trump. Declare him unfit. Rise up, rebel and overthrow him as, 250 years ago, George III was overthrown. Do whatever you must to peacefully rid the world of this gaudy, gormless usurper and dethrone this would-be king – but do it fast. Spike his guns. Shut him down. Lock him up. Exorcise the monster.

Since 1945, Americans have assumed the role of global freedom’s standard-bearer. Now they must liberate themselves. The US in 2026 requires a second revolution. To escape the nightmare, to rescue democracy, to rebuild the city on the hill, the tyrant must fall.

• Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator.