2/ The modern world order comes from the Peace of Westphalia (1648), where exhausted European powers agreed to noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. Each sovereign state would balance the others. It was about order, not agreed universal truth.

3/ That system worked—for Europe. And it can work for the world. But it excluded Russia, China, Islam, India, Africa, and the New World. Each of those civilizations had its own idea of world order. Not “balance of power.” Not sovereign equality. But universal supremacy.

4/ There were -- and ARE -- three primary visions: ▶️ Islam saw world order as submission to Allah: a Caliphate ruling over all. ▶️ China saw the Emperor as ruler of “All Under Heaven,” with others paying tribute. ▶️ Europe settled for a balance of power—and called it peace.

5/ America’s view? Semi Westphalian, Semi...Not A “city on a hill.” A just republic that wins the world by example, not force. When America got power, we imposed the European system—Westphalian sovereignty—but added a moral mission: human rights, democracy, capitalism.

6/ But after WWII, America went further. We built a liberal international order: ▪️ Sovereign states ▪️ Free markets ▪️ Rule of law ▪️ Human rights And everyone had to join—even cultures that never agreed to these rules in the first place. They're not all happy about it.

7/ China is building a Sinocentric alternative. Russia dreams of empire. Radical Islam wants a Caliphate. The EU wants to transcend sovereignty with a supranational technocracy. And America? We're torn.

8/ The result is chaos: ▪️ WMDs spreading ▪️ Proxy wars everywhere ▪️ AI and cyber making war faster than humans can respond ▪️ Terrorists stronger than some governments ▪️ No shared rules, no shared values—just raw power

9/ The Westphalian system only works when there's: ✅ Shared legitimacy ✅ Balance of power Today we have neither. No one believes the UN is legitimate. No one agrees on the rules.

10/ Trump is asserting the Westphalian system, though he doesn't say that. "America First" starts with the idea of nations. Trump's view isn't that America is an empire: quite the opposite. Nor does he think it's America's job to tell the world what to do.

11/ Trump believes nations matter: that they should have the right to run themselves as they wish so long as they don't harm us. That IS Westphalia. It's realist. It's practical. Critics say Trump is withdrawing from the world. He's actually re-drawing it.

12/ The Wilsonian fantasy is over. Nations have permanent interests. Pretending they don't has glossed over some problems, but created many others. Trump rejects that. Like the Protestants and Catholics in 1648, he knows he can't impose his will, and neither can the rest.

13/ But he also knows there are others who want to try. Competing empires, ancient visions: 🕌 Caliphate 🐉 Chinese Mandate 🪆 Russian autocracy None of those leave room for independent equals.

14/ Trump understands: to restore order, America must lead—but more wisely than this last generation. We must stop imposing values by force, but we must defend the system that made peace possible. But respecting other nations and not preaching at them is a bitter pill for D.C.

15/ China wants to rule the world. So do the Islamists. So does Putin's oligarchy. So do the Eurocrats. But so long as America prevents that, all of them will have to grudgingly accept Westphalia. And inside those boundaries, they can live as they prefer.

16/ And so long as that's true, Trump's "Commerce Not Chaos" will increasingly take hold, until the factors weighing against war are stronger than those for it, nearly everywhere. Ironically, realism will build the better world the globalists could not. https://www.rodmartin.org/p/co...

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