Old and new unilateralism: has American foreign policy really changed?

Recent events in the Middle East have raised once again the question of American unilateralism.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, alongside top military advisers and many members of his family, in one of the early waves of American and Israeli attacks in late February. These attacks were taken preemptively against the country’s leadership, military and nuclear assets following reported, but unconfirmed, Israeli intelligence that the Iranian government was planning an attack. In the weeks since, Western military installations in the region have been bombarded by Iranian missiles: US military bases across the region, alongside UK bases in Cyprus and the Chagos Islands, and French bases in Abu Dhabi, have all been struck as part of the Iranian retaliation.

The attack on the Chagos base, Diego Garcia, which has been the centre of significant controversy as the United Kingdom negotiates its withdrawal from the Chagos Islands with Mauritius against the wishes of the USA, demonstrates a significant enhancement in Iranian long-range military capability. Whilst Western intelligence estimates suggested previously that the IRGC could only strike targets around 2000km away from its borders, Diego Garcia is closer to double the distance as the crow flies. Targets around 4000km from Tehran include Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and London, signalling increased vulnerability for European states further and further disenfranchised from policy decisions taken in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Whilst Europe is now begrudgingly and somewhat forcibly involved (with France, Germany and the UK issuing statements of intent to engage in defensive action, alongside Commonwealth, Asian and Gulf states), the initial attack on Iran has clearly been jointly orchestrated, and continuously enacted, by the Trump and Netanyahu administrations. Jean Noël Barrot, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, has indeed claimed that countries have been “dragged” into a “war they did not choose”.

Similarly, long-suffering Keir Starmer has drawn rare approval from commentators and his backbenchers who largely agree that the PM is correct to protect British interests defensively, but should not go as far as to become a joint partner in the attacks on Iran. Starmer’s position, popular enough even to force Badenoch and Farage to renege on their originally enthusiastic support of the war, has incurred the wrath of President Trump, who called him “no Winston Churchill” and reposted a skit on his social media accounts from the first episode of Saturday Night Live UK, where Starmer is portrayed as a wimpish, dithering coward terrified of conflict and decisiveness in the face of Trump, whimpering at a comedian-version of David Lammy “What if he shouts at me…?”

This pattern of American action, followed by European constrained reaction concomitant with false pretenses of ‘the rules-based order’ cited with sharply dwindling conviction has been increasingly obvious since Trump assumed office for the second time in January 2025. Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela on January 3rd this year, resulting in the capture of president Nicolás Maduro, led to politicos suggesting the dawn of the so-called Donroe Doctrine, a la Monroe Doctrine, returning in part to the 20th century international arena where the United States had virtually total impunity over the Americas. The abrupt and unilateral nature of Absolute Resolve, however, created a contradiction within the European bloc. The continent was divided in the immediate aftermath between its attachment to international law and its position on the world stage, as an historical ally for the US and enemy to Venezuela. Ultimately, as it would for the Ayatollah, Europe decided it would ‘shed no tears’ over the abduction of a sovereign leader of another country (ignoring for a moment rumblings about election malpractice)

Israel’s involvement in the Middle East, as part-American vassal and part-sovereign nation which the USA seems ideologically and politically beholden to, somewhat complicates matters. Europe, beyond vague statements of discontent, were relatively happy to let Trump run roughshod over Venezuela; but Israel has long-since made the continent somewhat uncomfortable. The EU has furiously criticised the state since the beginning of its genocide in Gaza but has declined to take material action (one imagines due to outsized German – whose relationship with Israel remains ironclad – influence) against it; but France, the UK and Belgium recognised a Palestinian state in 2025 as an limited overture towards peace and veiled critique of Netanyahu’s policies in the Strip and in the West Bank. In reality, this is unlikely to signal a significant movement in Euro-Israeli relations; most European leaders mainly remain hopeful he continues to take their calls. As a result, European diplomats have focused more on the ends than the means in their responses to the war in Iran.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas defended in a statement the importance of the “UN Charter” “under all circumstances”, in the name of its 26 member states. But figures of the European far right, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, used more ambiguous rhetoric, legitimising defensive intervention against the threat of drug trafficking, while still discouraging external intervention initially. Interestingly, as right-wing European voters have expressed their discontent with yet another war in the Middle East, these ambiguities have lessened and the right have coalesced behind the wider European position of concern over international law, Meloni chief amongst them.

The multilateral spirit of international law has once again been challenged by Trump’s annexation threats on Greenland, perhaps the most stark threat and the least politically workable. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, an EU nation state and member of NATO. If the US were to annex Greenland, Denmark would be in their legal right to invoke the mutual protection clause within Article 5 of the NATO constitution, obligating other NATO states to protect Greenland from American annexation. But would they?

Trump doesn’t seem to think so; evidenced by his claim in January of this year to the New York Times that only his “own morality” can stop him, contemporary to the creation of the “Board of Peace”, an US-centered concurrent to the UN. With the US’ only military and economic peer, China, happy to largely ignore political goings-on in Europe, South America and the Middle East, Trump’s administration largely has a free remit to shape vast swathes of the world as they see fit. Elon Musk, former Executive Advisor to the President, put it well in 2020; “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

It is unfair to say this unilateralism is unique to the current US administration; the 2003 invasion of Iraq was carried out mainly by the US and the UK in a move opposed both domestically and internationally, with extraordinarily heavy protestations from France and Germany. The disagreement was articulated around the casus belli for the war, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell asserting the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. On the contrary, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin along with an UN inspection team, emphasised the lack of evidence for WMDs. Ultimately, the 9/11 Commission would find in 2004 that there was no credible evidence linking deposed leader, Saddam Hussein, with Al-Queda; further, the Chilcot Report found in 2016 found that the war itself was unnecessary as peaceful options had not been fully explored.

This 2003 scenario bears striking resemblance to the more recent crises we mentioned. Shared characteristics include US military intervention, emphasis on caution and international law from Europe, followed by American defiance of institutions like the UN. One therefore has to wonder whether the outcome will be the same, considering Obama’s settlement with the Iranians in 2015 to limit Iranian nuclear enrichment and Trump’s exit from said agreement in 2018 under the ‘maximum pressure strategy’. The casus belli for the current conflict is, in part, to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but this was on the table over a decade ago. The question has to be asked, as a result, whether America has historically cared more for mutual collaboration and cooperation, or for control over regime change?

The failure of American Wilsonianism in the 1920s confirms the latter. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918 functioned as a manifesto in favor of international liberalism. Point XIV, in particular, laid the foundation for the League of Nations, which was itself the basis for the modern UN. But the relative success of the League in Europe and Asia (though it failed in curtailing Italy in Ethiopia, the USSR stormed out and it was helpless in stopping the invasion of Manchuria) was not matched in the US, which ironically never joined in spite of initiating the idea, being defeated in the Senate. Ultimately, the ideologies of unilateralism – action alone – and isolationism – international non-involvement – limited the impact of Wilson’s proposal, and led to Republican victory in the 1920 presidential election.

While the case studies of Iraq and the League of Nations support the argument for continuity in American foreign policy, the feeling of change is palpable.

This is because the form of unilateral action has radically shifted during Trump’s second term. The rhetoric of defiance and provocation has been central to the White House’s diplomacy and communication since early 2025. This has been made especially clear through social media, where the administration has published increasingly scandalous, discriminatory and inflammatory content, often generated by AI. Taking advantage of polarising algorithms on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, or X, it has imprudently attacked political actors around the globe. The risk is that verbal aggression online translates into military escalation on the ground, as is currently the case in the Middle East region. The difference is, essentially, being knifed in the front or in the back. Ironically, the difference is between regime change done in secret through targeted assassinations and funding to the right paramilitary groups, and regime change through a Tomahawk missile landing on top of a leader’s safehouse.

The European struggle between international law and its alliance with the US is worsened by such outrage-driven communication. Continued tacit support or even veiled criticism materially makes no difference, and as a result, if Europe is serious in its commitment to international law above all else, it must take more radical action. Some immediate steps forward include regulation of social media platforms, digital sovereignty, renewed commitment to peace. In the longer term, this will look like a coordinated plan to end European dependence on American financial systems, AI tools, and military equipment, if it wants to strike out on its own separate from US muscularity in the international arena. With European public sentiment at odds with American and Israeli policy, the time has never, and may never, be better. Will Europe commit to a new international paradigm, or will it fall in line? The next weeks and months will be vital moments for the continent.

Edited by Aidain Clair and Rares Cocilnau