India, Jan. 10 -- The old world order, shaped by the US-led West, is withering away, and the emerging new world offers a bleak vision. The global power consensus (at least on paper) after World War II was that all disputes, including on trade and territory, could be mediated and resolved without armed conflict. Trump 2.0 has ended this consensus. On topics as different as the climate crisis and global trade, Donald Trump is charting his own singular path with the intent of imposing the US's will on the world. When the world's premier power embarks on a path of unilateralism, it has consequences: Many nations, especially those with expansionist agendas, tend to take the cue from the US. In an interview with the New York Times, he said the only limit on his powers arises from his own morality and mind, not international law. That's good to know! The multiple policy pivots the US has made in recent weeks have wrecked several global consensus. On Thursday, the US announced its withdrawal from a clutch of UN bodies and other multilateral platforms, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), exits that come at a time when the need for effective coordination forums and global bodies is greatly felt. Last week, US forces abducted the president of Venezuela and brought him to New York to face trial on narco-terrorism charges. Soon, Trump made it explicit that Washington will for the near future administer Venezuela and trade its oil resources. Trump has also upped the ante on Greenland and indicated that the US may even use military force to acquire it. If Trump pursues this goal, it may end the special ties that the US and Western Europe have enjoyed and even lead to the unravelling of alliances such as NATO. Most recently, Trump's backing for a Bill that approves 500% tariffs on nations trading in Russian oil and hydrocarbons threatens to impact the US's relations, including with New Delhi. Driving Trump's policies is a mix of the Make America Great Again vision, old-world mercantilism, and imperialism. If, in the original form, MAGA meant a calibration of the US's policies to privilege an inward-looking, protectionist White America-centric view, it now threatens to change the terms of global engagement and drag Washington into a tangle of global conflicts. Private interests and trade lobbies seem to be converging to unleash a set of policies that will force a regression on issues such as the climate crisis and respect for national borders, over which there seemed to be a broad global consensus. In this form, the America First thrust of Trump is a fraught project: Even at the peak of its powers, the US was careful to present its views as a collective vision of the West. To be sure, the world is much more connected today, and also resistant to domination by any single power. A multi-polar world, as envisaged by countries such as India, is now a necessity that can inject much-needed rationality into global discourse. A first step would be for Europe and the Global South to strengthen global platforms such as the UN and UNFCCC. Whatever Trump does, this may be a transitory moment; nations operate in longer time spans. International alliances and bilateral relations will need to fireproof themselves from the ongoing upheaval, not to preserve an old order, but for the survival of a world threatened by catastrophic changes in the climate. This calls for reforms and restructuring of multilateral platforms and a moral politics that rejects unilateralism and a might-is-right approach to trade and territory....