Method to the madness: Trump is dismantling the rules-based global order

Key Markets report for Thursday, 26 Jun 2025

Image borrowed from Allen Salkin and Aaron Short’s book, “Method to the Madness”

As the dust settles in the aftermath of the most recent events in the Middle East, we now have a better idea of what Donald Trump administration’s actions achieved. It seems that there is indeed a method to Trump’s “madness,” and that his government’s method is consistently aimed at dismantling the rules-based global order. On Sunday, 22 June the world was shocked to learn that Trump ordered an aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear program. These attacks have been planned for months, since before Trump took office, but their ultimate objective was not just to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, but to bring about a regime change.

Many observers thought that Trump’s go-ahead for the attacks was a betrayal of his supporters, but by now we can appreciate what the attacks achieved, and to paraphrase Prince, what they did was “something very close to nothing, but different than the day before.” Iran’s nuclear program sustained only limited damage as did their ballistic missile program. Even though the attack’s ultimate objective was a regime change in Iran, the regime is still very much intact. Rather than pouring into the streets to overthrow their government, the Iranians rallied around it instead.

Netanyahu falls into Trump’s trap

Military action against Iran was cut short, the regime in Iran remained intact and if a regime change happens anywhere in the region, it is most likely to take place in Israel. Desperate for a political boost, Benjamin Netanyahu jumped at the opportunity to declare victory, thank Trump profusely and exploit the event for propaganda purposes to the maximum effect, including draping buildings in Israel with Trump’s portraits and statements, “Thank you Mr. President.”

It is now politically impossible for Netanyahu to disown this position and admit that he’d been duped. He must now own the aftermath. Accordingly, Israel and the American CIA both agreed that Trump did indeed destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Israel’s victory is, therefore, confirmed (nudge, nudge, wink, wink..).

“I’m not happy with Israel.”

On his way to the NATO Summit this week, Trump issued complimentary statements about the Iranians, thanking them for pre-announcing their retaliatory attacks on a US base in Qatar and expressing openness to future negotiations and cooperation. He was much less complimentary toward Israel, berating them for jeopardizing the cessation of hostilities:

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, ‘OK, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drag everything you have on them. So I’m not happy with them.”

Expressing any criticism of Israel in public is very unusual for any US politician; it’s practically unprecedented since the days of John F. Kennedy. But Trump went as far as reining in Netanyahu; apparently, upon learning of Israel’s new bombing raid, he called him and demanded that he call off the attack and order Israeli aircraft to turn back. Apparently, Netanyahu obliged.

No new sanctions on Iran

While travelling on Air Force 1 on his way to the NATO Summit, Trump was asked whether he wanted to see a regime change in Iran, to which he replied,

“No, I don’t want [that]. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible. Regime change takes chaos, and… we don’t want to see so much chaos so we’ll see how it does. You know, the Iranians are very good traders, very good business people, and they got a lot of oil. They should be fine. They should be able to build and do a good job.”

Furthermore, Trump lifted some of the previously imposed sanctions on Iran and said that he wasn’t looking to any new ones against the regime. For his part, Steve Wytkoff gave an interview saying that the lifting of sanctions was a message to China, and the message that the US is prepared to make deals. This would appear consistent with Trump’s position that the rules based global order is obsolete, that the multipolar integrations are the new reality and that his administration is ready to embrace and join this process. This is a very different approach to being the globocop, which is what the United States has been since the end of World War 2.

Other developments

Trump administration’s policies in other (indirectly) related domains reaffirm this. Asked about NATO Article 5 provision, which essentially stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all, Trump was ambivalent; rather than unequivocally upholding the principle, he said that the US might honor it, “depending on your definition” of the Article and added that there are different definitions of it.

We recently also learned that Trump disbanded a secret inter-agency working group tasked with formulating strategies against Russia, including plotting false flag operations and coercing her into giving concessions to Ukraine. This is according to a Reuters report published on 17 June, titled, “Trump administration disbands group focused on pressuring Russia.” All the members of this group, consisting of individuals from the US Treasury, State Department, intelligence community and the Pentagon were dismissed.

With regards to more sanctions against Russia, Treasury Secretary Bessent has warned against them and Trump took the same position at the recent G7 meeting, also resisting the efforts to lower Russia oil price cap.

In all, Trump seems to be consistently inflicting blows to the postwar global order, even if this is not quite clear from the rhetoric that has tended to be all over the place. If this is true, we should hope that his administration is successful in effecting all these changes, especially his stated aim of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

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Today’s trading signals

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio: