The cumulative effect of the United States’ increasingly unilateral actions suggests that the world may be drifting toward a crisis potentially more destabilising than the COVID-19 pandemic. Under President Donald Trump, power—not multilateral consensus—has become the dominant currency of global and domestic politics
IN my view, the world is rapidly sliding back toward an era reminiscent of Viking ideology—a time when law and order were weak or nonexistent, and global affairs were governed largely by the crude doctrine of might is right.
To properly situate this argument, it is useful to recall who the Vikings were. They were formidable warriors, seafarers, and explorers who raided, traded, and settled across large swathes of Europe. Their activities left deep marks on places such as England, Ireland, and France, most notably with events like the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 AD. They also established enduring settlements, including the Duchy of Normandy and Vinland in North America.
Historically, the Vikings traversed Europe, parts of Asia, and even North America using longships that were technologically advanced for their time—fast, agile, and highly effective. They settled in places like Iceland and Normandy, leaving behind legacies in language, culture, governance, and geography. Yet beneath this legacy lay a harsh reality: the Vikings were an exceptionally violent people, driven by conquest and domination. For centuries, they overran territories, deposed rulers, and imposed their authority through brute force.
In this respect, the Vikings bear striking similarities to modern terrorist movements such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS in the Middle East, as well as Boko Haram, ISWAP, and Al-Shabab in Africa. Like the Vikings of old, these groups seek to dismantle existing orders and impose their own rule through violence, terror, and coercion.
Although this comparison may seem like a digression, it serves a critical purpose: to underscore the timeless truth that there is little that is truly new in human affairs. Modern terrorist organisations can reasonably be viewed as contemporary equivalents of the Vikings—celebrated by some for their perceived courage, yet condemned by others for their savagery and brutality. Importantly, the Viking age eventually came to an end, and so too will today’s violent extremist movements if the international community works collectively and resolutely.
One of history’s great ironies is that the same Arctic region once associated with conquest and bloodshed later gave rise to the Nobel Peace Prize. Instituted by Alfred Nobel of Sweden, the prize has become one of the world’s most respected symbols of peace and human coexistence. Ironically, the Nobel Peace Prize was recently awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—an honour President Donald Trump was widely believed to have coveted.
It is now being suggested that Trump’s failure to secure the Nobel Prize may have partly influenced the renewed American interest in acquiring Greenland, a territory located in the same Arctic region. Even if reports that the prize recipient donated her trophy to Trump are true, his appetite for Greenland appears undiminished. And Trump justifies his desire for the Nobel prize with the fact that he is responsible for ending or preventing eight (8) wars since his return to the White House as the 47th president of the US.
This development reinforces the idea that history often repeats itself: the United States had sought to acquire Greenland decades before Trump’s presidency, meaning his efforts merely revived an old geopolitical ambition whereby the US has since 1946 set its eyes on acquiring Greenland, and in 2019, when it made another attempt to do so.
Similarly, while the Viking reign of terror ended roughly a millennium ago, it has been replaced in the modern era by violent extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, ISWAP, and Al-Shabab. These movements, too, will eventually fade into history if the global community demonstrates unity, determination, and sustained cooperation.
It therefore behoves leaders genuinely committed to ending terrorism—particularly in Nigeria and across Africa—to revisit history and study how the excesses of the Vikings were ultimately curtailed, paving the way for a more stable and peaceful Europe and North America.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the world’s most powerful military alliance, appears increasingly strained. Threats by President Trump to impose 10 percent tariffs on countries opposing a U.S. takeover of Greenland, coupled with the deployment of military contingents by the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to Greenland under NATO’s Article 5 obligations, raise the spectre of an all-out trade war between the United States and the European Union.
With the EU reportedly preparing a €93 billion trade retaliation package should tensions fail to ease, the world may be on the brink of another catastrophic trade conflict. Such a development would serve no one, especially at a time when the global economy is still struggling to recover from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which ravaged the world for nearly three years.
The cumulative effect of the United States’ increasingly unilateral actions suggests that the world may be drifting toward a crisis potentially more destabilising than the COVID-19 pandemic. Under President Donald Trump, power—not multilateral consensus—has become the dominant currency of global and domestic politics.
The US, Russia, and other powerful nations pushing their interests isn’t new, but it does feel like a shift. The disregard for international norms and institutions, as we saw with unilateral actions in various global conflicts Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and now US/Venezuela contributes to a sense that “might makes right” is gaining traction.
This perceived shift has people worried about:
– Erosion of international law: When powerful nations prioritise self-interest over global agreements.
– Power imbalance: Smaller nations or groups having less say.
– Unpredictability: Global stability suffers when big players act without consensus.
Whether this signals a “new world order” or just a messy chapter in geopolitics is being debated. However, the principle of might-is-right isn’t new historically, but the stakes feel different in today’s interconnected world.
The Trump administration justifies its aggressive posture toward Venezuela and its renewed interest in Greenland as acts of self-preservation. The argument is straightforward: if the United States does not secure these strategic spaces, rivals such as Russia and China will. In international relations, self-preservation is often treated as the first law of nature, and Trump has embraced this logic unapologetically.
Yet these actions unfold against the backdrop of a weakened United Nations. Long tasked with arbitrating disputes between nations, the UN has seen its authority steadily eroded—accelerated by Washington’s deliberate withdrawal from its processes. With only five permanent members still dominating the Security Council despite decades of reform demands, the 80-year-old institution appears increasingly irrelevant in shaping today’s global order.
What is striking, however, is that the same reliance on force abroad is now mirrored at home. In Minnesota, following the fatal shooting of a civilian by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, mass protests erupted. Rather than pursue de-escalation, President Trump deployed security forces and threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act—an extraordinary step that would permit the use of the military against American citizens.
This suggests that President Trump is not discriminatory in his pursuit of change from the old order to a new one, both internationally and domestically.
Put succinctly, Trump’s internal disruption of long-standing norms parallels his new and as some of his critics suggest, confrontational approach internationally, including threats to invade Iran over its treatment of protesters and earlier U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Together, they signal a decisive break from the restraint imposed by the old world order as a governing principle.
The confrontation with the Federal Reserve Bank chairman further underscores this shift. Trump’s threat to investigate Fed Chairman Jerome Powell over alleged financial misconduct—after Powell allegedly resisted political pressure to cut interest rates—has alarmed critics who see it as an attempt to subdue an independent institution. Powell has publicly described the move as a politically motivated effort to force his resignation, but Trump clarifies that an accountability-driven initiative.
Where does Africa fit into this global turbulence? While nearly half of the continent’s 54 countries face varying U.S. visa restrictions, Africa may yet avoid the worst effects of the emerging trade wars. Indeed, the continent could benefit as rival global powers seek new allies amid the breakdown of old partnerships
Taken together — the seizure of Venezuela’s president and his wife, plans to acquire Greenland, threats of military action abroad, pressure on domestic institutions, and the possible deployment of troops at home—these actions form a coherent pattern. To critics, it resembles the tactic of “giving a dog a bad name to hang it.”, but to Trump and his team, it reflects his quest for change in furtherance of his MAGA doctrine.
Also, Trump’s defenders argue that none of this is surprising. The president never concealed his intentions. His America First doctrine was the centerpiece of his successful 2024 campaign, endorsed by millions of voters (over 77 million) who preferred dominance over diplomacy and choosehim over democraticParty candidate-ex vice president Kamala Harris. Even U.S. military actions abroad, including strikes in Nigeria carried out in cooperation with local forces on Christmas Day in Sokoto, align with this worldview.
Trump’s symbolic renaming of the Department of Defense as the Department of War was perhaps the clearest signal of all. The question now is not whether he will use power to reshape the global order, but whether that order—once anchored on rules rather than force—can survive the transformation. The jury is still out on that.
Not many people recall the security report warning that ISIS was collaborating with ISWAP to seize control of the West African coastline—particularly Nigeria’s waterfronts—which could potentially serve as a launch pad for attacks on the United States, given the shared Atlantic coastline with states such as Florida. That may be one of the reasons the US was motivated to launch the costly Tomahawk missiles against terrorist camps in Nigeria’s Sokoto state.
Setting aside morality and emotion and adopting a strictly scholarly lens, President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) mantra—reinforced by his America First doctrine—emerges as the driving force behind his disruptive policies, unsettling to those who are dogmatic about the old world order. These actions are not only reshaping the long-established political order in the United States, which Trump vowed to upend by “draining the Washington swamp,” but are also altering the global order in ways unseen since the creation of the League of Nations, which later evolved into the United Nations (UN) some eighty years ago.
Trump’s symbolic renaming of the Department of Defense as the Department of War should have signaled to discerning observers that military force would play a central role in advancing his America First agenda. His actions—particularly the attempt to acquire Greenland, a territory linked to Denmark and by extension NATO—risk fracturing the alliance and evoke echoes of America’s historic conflicts with its former colonial overseer, the United Kingdom famously referred to as the war of Independence in 1776.
Beyond withdrawing the United States from 66 international organisations deemed by Trump to be a waste of American resources, his tariff wars have shaken the foundations of global cooperation—commonly referred to as globalisation—to its core. The result is an increasingly fragmented world order reminiscent of the biblical lament: “To your tents, O Israel.”
At a recent roundtable convened by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) under the leadership of its Director-General, Professor Eghosa Osaghae—where I had the privilege of serving on a panel alongside leading scholars in international relations, with former Foreign Affairs Minister Professor Bolaji Akinyemi presiding—we argued that the world may be sliding back into an era of “might is right,” an era thought to have ended with the establishment of the League of Nations.
With two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—Russia and, more recently, the United States—violating the very rules they helped create, the UN is rapidly losing its relevance as the arbiter of global affairs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. arrest of Venezuela’s president and his wife underscore this decline. However uncomfortable this reality may be for defenders of multilateralism, it is the United States—not the UN or even the World Trade Organization—that is now setting the global trade agenda through unilateral tariff wars.
Furthermore, I drew parallels between Rwanda’s alleged sponsorship of the M23 militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, aimed at securing access to the country’s vast rare-earth mineral deposits, and the U.S. move against Venezuela’s leadership. In both cases, neighbouring states with greater institutional capacity are drawn to resource-rich but poorly governed neighbours—whether by persuasion or coercion.
The same logic of enlightened self-interest arguably underpins America’s pursuit of Greenland, fair or foul. Rich in strategic resources and geopolitically vital, Greenland has become another theatre in the reassertion of power politics.
So, Trump’s revolution is driven by both economic and national security interests.
Where does Africa fit into this global turbulence? While nearly half of the continent’s 54 countries face varying U.S. visa restrictions, Africa may yet avoid the worst effects of the emerging trade wars. Indeed, the continent could benefit as rival global powers seek new allies amid the breakdown of old partnerships.
Ultimately, one hopes that this unfolding crisis will not culminate in mutual global destruction, but rather in a managed transition—where an old world order gives way to a new one without catastrophe
President Trump has been known to back down from his tough stance.
Hopefully, that would be the case this time around as both the European Union and the US, erstwhile partners find a common ground in avoiding the looming danger.
- Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, development strategist, an alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA, a Commonwealth Institute scholar, and a former commissioner in the Delta State government, sent this piece from Lagos.